Undone

The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.
Oswald Chambers

(another year, another tree tossed over the back deck / Julie Cook / 2014)

Undecorated
Unlighted
Untangled
Undone

Once again another tree is drug through the house, leaking a vast trailing carpet of dried needles.
Hoisted up and over the railing, only to fall unceremoniously with a sickening thud,
onto the hard cold ground below.
Off to decompose on the compost heap or off to the lake to create an underwater hiding place for Spring’s spawning fish.

For what’s now done cannot be undone–as time now moves forward, taking us all along with it.
We are slowly beginning the transition of the past to the future.
Packing away all that was, anticipating all that is to be.

Ancient mysteries have played out once again as we recall what has drawn us to this time and place.
For what was set in motion so long ago, with the birth of a single child, cannot be undone with the discarding of a tree, the packing away of ornaments, the traveling back to home and school, the ending of the festivities. . .the parties, the dinners, the services, the sales, the returns. . .all pieces of the ending of a season.

And no matter how much we work to change, pack, repack, stash away, move, transition from this to that. . .there is no act of man that can ever undo what was done that single night, so long ago in that tiny desert village, in that small cramped stable under the watchfulness of that single star.
For what God has wrought, no man can undo.

You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD. “I have chosen you as my servant so that you can know and believe in me and understand that I am the one [who did this]. No god was formed before me, and there will be none after me.
I alone am the LORD, and there is no savior except me.
I have revealed it to you, I have saved you, and I have announced it to you. There was no foreign god among you. You are my witnesses that I am God,” declares the LORD.
“From the first day I was the one who did this. No one can rescue people from my power. When I do something, who can undo it?”
Isaiah 43:10-13