In summer, I have never found myself missing the bare tree branches of winter. I wouldn’t say I am especially eager to see the green leaves turn to browns, oranges, and reds, but I do love this season when it comes. I’m glad to see this season come; glad to behold the palette of colors adorn the hills and mountains. Beautiful as it is, I behold it all with a slight melancholy, knowing that the beauty will be brief. I know that a good rainstorm or strong winds can end the beauty in a day. In this season, I have never found myself eager for the leaves to fall away. I have never been excited to see the branches empty, the hillsides and mountains bare.

So I tend to love the green leaf of summer for what it is. I tend to love the multicolored leaves of autumn for what they are, wishing them to always stay longer than they do. I have to be mindful to let myself appreciate the branches as full of color rather than soon-to-be empty. As for the bare branches of winter, I tend to think less about the bare branches as they are and more about the full green branches they will once again be. I suppose that isn’t such a bad way to go about the winter season. However, it occurs to me that there is beauty enough in the barren branches themselves that it need not be ignored in favor of beauty yet to be or past beauty remembered.

It is not uncommon for people to occupy their minds with looking ahead and looking back, sometimes forgetting to appreciate and value things as they are. Human beings tend to do this easily. Indeed, it is not difficult at all for the mind to do this. We hold the images of yesterday tightly and our brains store them and bring them up quite vividly. We are gifted with imagination, able to envision and dream tomorrows yet to be. These are both divine gifts. They are reflections or fingerprints of the God who breathes our souls into being.

Often God is described in our sacred texts as One who remembers his children. That is a more profound thing than we may realize. It is a remembering of every moment of us, every version of us, day to day and year to year. It is a remembering that arouses God’s deep love and compassion toward us.

Time and again through the words of the prophets and Jesus, God declares what shall one day be. He gives visions and foretelling of things yet to come. He speaks of promises of deliverance; safekeeping through life’s storms, and ultimately humanity and creation unmarred by trespass and error.

So, we might say it is divine to look back. We might say it is divine to look ahead. We must not forget that it is also divine to remain grounded in, and appreciative of, the moment or season in which we find ourselves at any time. The God that remembers, the God that looks ahead to the future and calls the future into being is the same God, when asked for a name, says “I AM who I AM”. The Hebrew uses what we could call a “perpetually present tense” for the verb, describing God as eternally present in the NOW.

It is not unusual to not only prefer the past or to long after the future but prefer them above the present moment. We wish we could be what we once were. We sometimes long to be more than we are and are sometimes impatient to get on with. Neither is necessarily bad, unless it causes one to be so displeased with oneself or one’s circumstances in the current moment or season of life that this moment passes by unlived. For you, the current moment may be one of new buds springing to life, full green leaves, leaves growing colorful and dry, or branches bare. It is the moment in which you are. It is the moment where God IS, the moment in which we are loved. So, cherish what has been, hope brightly for what will be, and as for the in- between where you currently are…. love yourself as you are now loved; cherish yourself as you are now cherished. Just as the God who looks back and looks forward loves you here and now, so love yourself. Also, equally important, don’t forget to love your neighbor as yourself.