Autumn and orange flowers

I went by the cemetery a couple of weeks ago and checked the summery yellow flowers I had put on Tim's grave. Some were beginning to deteriorate. The brown sunflower centers had become detached from some of them and others were beginning to fade. I took them all out of the vase and turned the vase over, leaving the marker empty of flowers temporarily. I was thinking, fall will soon be here, it's time to put some new ones in anyway...

Suddenly as clear as a bell I could hear Tim say, "Please don't spend a lot of money on more flowers to put out here."

I reminded him once again, "Honey, they aren't for you to look at, they are for other people. Remember what your mom and your Aunt Betty said?"

They had expressed the same sentiments I had, that it looks like people don't care when gravesites have no flowers, or if the flowers haven't been cared for in a while. Even if the families do care, the appearance is that they don't. I just don't want to give that appearance to any visitors.

"Well then, just buy one or two orange ones and use the others that are still good, put them back together and that should be plenty. Okay? Please?"

So I said okay, and that's what I did. I only threw away a few of the flowers after all, the ones that had come apart. Most of the others still looked okay and all of the greenery was fine. I went to Hobby Lobby one afternoon soon after that, picked out a few pretty autumn orange flowers, came home and made a new arrangement. This time I did a better job of getting the stems together, then took some tin foil with me to fill in around the bottom of the vase and drove back over to the cemetery. I like this arrangement better than the yellow one and it should last a good while.

I know Tim really doesn't like that place. I know it's not the kind of scenery he's seeing these days, which is spectacularly beautiful. In my mind I try to visualize what kind of landscape surrounds his new home, but I'm quite sure it's far more gorgeous than anyone here on earth can possibly imagine.

Still, now and then the Lord prompts me to see the beauty right here on earth, and as I see the leaves beginning to take on their fall colors I am so grateful for it. All those greens! All those browns! All those golds! Those sprinkles of orange, and yellow, and red among the greens and browns. How lovely the fall can be.

And all the multitude of shades of green, brown, gold, orange, yellow, and red -- the Master Designer planned every one of them, created them in His mind first, then brought them to life here on earth.

Recently the Lord asked me a question: Have you ever considered leaves? Well, no, not really. Then the thought came to me -- how many different leaves are there in the world? How many shapes? Colors? Shades of green? Type of edges? Sizes? Textures? Thickness?

I started thinking about leaves. Some are pale green, some dark, some are dull and some shiny. Some are thin and some thick, some very large, some very small. Some have sawtooth edges, some are smooth and straight. Some are delicate, nearly transparent. Some are leathery, others velvety to the touch. From broad magnolias to tiny ferns, God designed leaves in an infinite variety then gave them to us. And that's just an infinitesimal fraction of his creation...

He pointed all this out to me that day. He designed, created, and gave these to us, to me, to notice, look at, enjoy, and give Him the glory for. And I do, I am grateful for God's beautifully designed creation all around me, even the artificial likenesses of His autumn flowers and leaves in the vase on Tim's grave marker.