The Sun Sets Faster In December

My friends the leaves are being stubborn this fall.

I guess they are reluctant to leave the comforts of the trees where they were birthed last spring.

From their perch in massive oaks, I think they have figured out how messy the world can be.

Some fallen leaves will gracefully decompose. Others might be run over by a shredding lawn mower blade. For some, they will be blown by a leaf blower with hurricane force wind into another neighbor’s yard. And even a single leaf can be gobbled up by a leaf vacuum where it is shredded, and dumped without care into a dark cavernous bag.

Our leaf pile has been at the edge of the front yard for several weeks. I’ve been adding to the pile on a weekly basis. In order to have the pile disappear by the end of December, we had to meet a November sign up deadline with our county.

I appreciate all that our trees do for our environment, but in truth, I dread the fall when they without a care cascade down into our yard.

I mutter internally from the first whisk of the rake tines to the last run over the yard with the lawnmower. Yes, I could pay a landscape company to come out and attack our leaves, but I’m still too much of a cheapskate. Besides, I think the leaf work is good for my health, and it does give me time to daydream.

The afternoon of Thursday, December 7 was just about perfect. Bright sun, pretty blue sky, cool temperature, but not too cool. An occasional gust of unexpected wind had me appreciating this opportunity to work on our leaves.

In the backyard across a neighbor’s leaning wooden fence, I could hear the broken English chatter of the framing crew working on a new addition.

When I moved to the front yard, the banter came from the neighbor’s boys across the street. These brothers and their friends were involved in bike riding, and then a kickball game. I was tempted to ask if I could join the game.

And, I noticed something else in my leaf work, the sun sets faster in December. I looked up and out toward the west, the sun had started its descent.

Thousands of feet up in the atmosphere, I can pick out commercial jets with their normally white contrails. In the sinking last rays of the sun, the contrails are an array of constantly changing pastels of orange and pink. With daylight fading, I had to pickup my pace.

The seasonal hustle of December automatically quickens our pace. With winter almost here, our daylight begins to shrink. That is a tough adjustment for some. Those last angles of sunlight that skim a rooftop, twist through barren trim limbs, and gradually disappear down Stuart Hall and Sweetbriar hills mean something to a person whose hope lies in that sunlight.

As December pushes us to a faster pace on its treadmill, I need to remember—I’m going to encounter people who lives haven’t been a graceful fall, who feel life has shredded them like a mulching blade, their daily living has been blown so far off course that their hope is gone, and some are buried in the burden of a singular loneliness at the bottom of leaf bag.

Yes, the sun does set faster in December.

And yet, we can’t let that stop us from being the light for those around us who struggle with December and Christmas.

Genesis 1:4 states: “and God saw that the light was good,”

Let you, me, we, us be the good light of hope to those we encounter whose lives sink fast in the sunsets of December.