The Blowing Machine

There is this boy that I work with who loves to be on the move (I'm not going to call him by his real name for many purposes, so let's call him Harry) . Today was a very nice day and here in Indiana most of the leaves have fallen and cover the ground. Can you picture it? Some are a darker green, some a bright orange/yellow and some are already brown. Look around with me and you'll see a nice brick home with a very big back yard covered with many different types of trees. Because of the season the backyard is covered with these multicolored leaves. Harry loves to watch things move, whether it is feet in a gymnasium, grass flowing from the side of a lawn mower or leaves being blown by a mechanical blower. Now, growing up in Albuquerque these blowers are rather scarce, because desert doesn't put on this great of a display of fallen leaves, so I hadn't had the opportunity to watch one in full motion, let alone use one. But, Harry was asking for this blower to be used. Now, I would like to stop here and share with you a little about Harry. He is a middle school boy who wasn't given the many distractions you and I were given which causes these little beautiful things to go unnoticed. Harry is a boy with autism. He doesn't talk like you and me nor does he express himself like we would, but he does speak and he does express. He uses pictures, gestures, groans, yells, tugs and other such methods to express his desires. Today he chose to use a picture of a blower (thanks to his mother who took the picture) to show us that this was the activity he was ready to partake in. So, off to the garage to get the extension cord and the blower for Harry. When everything was hooked up I was asked to blow for Harry, so I started up the blower and began to blow the leaves off of the porch. Then life began to move in slow motion and God began to speak to me. I watched the leaves blow, but I didn't see exactly what was blowing them. Harry was watching with amusement as the leaves slammed against a wall and/or a trash can and fly up in the air only to be given a second chance to experience the fall back to the ground. He was so excited about this process. Harry then took the blower from me so that he could cause this state of flux for these fallen leaves. Here is where I began to think... I am a leaf! What tree did I fall from? Was it an oak, a maple or maybe a birch tree. And like those leaves, I have taken shape depending on that environment (tree) and then during my life I fell............. and fell........... and fell........... and have fallen down to the ground. I didn't realize it when it happened because the flight down was so surreal and motionless, but it was still a fall.

I was still in deep thought when something else happened. Harry got up and started blowing these leaves down the path and into the yard and then with the natural breeze these leaves ended up in a group of many fallen leaves. It wasn't until later that my thoughts were given closure in this great parallel. But that night these leaves from this group were picked up off of the ground and placed in a pit where a fire would soon take form. The fire burned bright and it was hot and very dangerous, but very beautiful and warm and that is when my parallel was changed.

I'm not a leaf... I'm a tree! The choices I make are like leaves and once I make them they fall to the ground and then are either eaten up by a lawn mower and used to nurture the ground or thrown in a pit for burning purposes or something else. I like the idea of these leaves being thrown into the fire, because once they are burned they can never reappear, in fact those burnt leaves actually go into the ground and allow a nurturing too... and isn't that kind of what Jesus did on the cross? Jesus took those bad decisions and burned them to where they would no longer be around, but the lessons learned from that fall can be used to nurture me to health. The tree looks different because of fallen leaves, but the tree still remains and has the opportunity to wave it's branches for the Creator.

Thank God that I'm not the leaf!