Could you make a leaf for me?
One leaf. That’s all I ask.
Just one green or yellow or red leaf. Let’s say...a maple leaf.
I don’t mean that I want you to draw a leaf for me. I don’t want you to make one out of clay or fabric or wood. Don’t bother tracing one on construction paper.
I wonder if you could make just one of those feathery, manufacturing dynamos that are falling in the billions around us right now. It shouldn’t be hard. There are bushels full of them just outside your door for you to study.
If you feel up to it, try making one that:
-has a giant sun collector panel on it, one that can automatically turn itself towards the sun,
-has a big bunch of little tubes --microscopic tubes-- running through it in an intricate branching system
-can appear all by itself at just the right time in spring,
-can attach itself to a limb on a tree,
-is strong enough to withstand pelting rain, windstorms and droughts,
-can spend 6 or 7 months cooking up good food to send to the tree,
-is equipped with little breather holes to take bad things out of the air and replace those bad things with purified, oxygen laden air.
And if you don’t mind, when this single leaf has weathered wind, hail, rain and scorching sun through spring and summer and has come to the end of its life, could you make it have one last hurrah? Could you send it off in a blaze of colorful glory intense enough and beautiful enough to inspire poets and photographers and even little children?
God must have a hearty laugh every fall when the leaves let loose and take flight. We can’t make even 1 leaf. One single leaf outstrips all of our technology. But God makes zillions of them every year----and then lets the work of his hands rain down upon us in a blizzard of color. These intricate machines --- manufacturing plants that give the tree what it needs to soar scores of feet into the air, and to build trunks and branches that can live hundreds of years --- are tossed to the ground to give all their intricacies back to the earth.
The creator jettisons every last one of these miracles of his hand, tossing them to the wind, knowing that he can do it all over again come spring.
Yes, there are terrorists, snipers, disease, hurricanes and war around these days..
They seem very powerful, but if you’ll pick up a leaf, you’ll know who is really in control and that, in the end, all will be well.
