Oh, it’s a long, long while
From May to December,
But the days grow short
When you reach September.
When the autumn weather
Turns leaves to flame,
One hasn’t got time
For the waiting game.

Oh, the days dwindle down
To a precious few,
September, November.
And these few precious days
I’ll spend with you;
These precious days
I’ll spend with you.

Does this song ring a bell to any of you? It’s an oldie, written by Kurt Weill in the 1930s and popularized in the ’50s. It pops up in my brain fairly often, especially this time of year.
It’s a sad sort of love song that has been used in multiple productions, but right now it speaks of my time of life when leaves of a different sort begin to fall. As I write, I’m nursing a furious sciatic nerve. I, who love to walk, am leaning on a plastic pipe cane, sitting on ice, doing stretchy exercises. Other leaves—memory issues, vision and hearing losses, finances, too much to do, too little energy to do it. Our days are dwindling but not our love for God. We cling to him, but the canopy of our tree is thinning.
Have you ever lain on your back in a grove of trees and looked upwards? I think my first experience doing this was in a young pine grove at Camp Fireside. The view seemed wondrous, almost magical in the majestic movement of those slender pines. Perhaps the view from flat on our backs is God’s way of giving us a different perspective on life and death.
Not all our leaves are on the ground yet, but we ARE looking upward toward the Spring that will be forever green. Life down here may become grim, but whatever precious days we have left to us, me ’n Jim will hold hands, lean on each other, and await the Lord’s booming announcement from the throne:
“NO MORE DEATH OR PAIN OR CRYING. BEHOLD! I AM MAKING EVERYTHING NEW!”  (From Revelation 21)

September, November. These precious days I’ll spend with you.