Searching for Colors

This beauty is in my backyard. I'm always blown away by the colors of the fall. How in the world, can the leaves become so bright and beautiful right before they die? Yesterday, my son and I went exploring in the yard to find leaves for a project he's doing at preschool. We of course, found many more than we needed, just because of how breathtaking they are. We couldn't resist "picking" more and more. However, what I felt myself begin to look for were green ones. We had scads of red, orange, and yellow...but we needed a few greens to balance the bright colors out. As you are well aware, there are not many greens. So, when we would see one, we would say with excitement, "There's a green one!" As we were in the midst of hunting, something about looking for the green ones stood out to me.

It's as if the Lord was saying...

"Why are you looking for what's been here all along? They've been right here under your nose, but it's not been until now, that you can't find them, that you count them as valuable".

I don't know why it stood out to me. Maybe because I spend my life searching for "more" of what I've already been given in full. Or because I just try to get my hands on what seems out of my reach, only to find, it's been there all along. Either way, it was a message of hope. A message of fulfillment. A message of sufficiency.

A sweet reminder, that even though sometimes I search for things I don't have, that my Father is already there, and has always been there, even when I can't see. A gift to unwrap indeed.