When Autumn turns to Winter and sometimes-sun shines hot, leaves dry to crunchy underfoot. Those leaves once glorious shades of rich are now brittle, dry, broken.

So far gone, a gentle touch might be enough to break the leaf beyond repair.

I am reminded of skeleton leaves – so fine and dry there is nothing to them.

This picture came to me and I wondered if it were for you.

And maybe you feel guilty for sitting in your ‘comfort’ and your home when babes are washed up on shores in distant lands. Guilty that for all you have your heart still feels like it might disintegrate within you.

The mocking voice of how lucky you should feel, how happy you ought to be, how everyone else is managing, is like the hand that might crush you down beyond repair – like you might turn to dust and be borne away on the wind.

Because you feel bad for feeling bad and you feel like you are trapped in some cycle that will wear you down until you are no more than an invisible set of threads, that show the pattern of what was once a green leaf attached to the vine.

These are the verses I feel for you today,
“there is hope for a tree:
    If it is cut down, it will sprout again,
    and its new shoots will not fail.
8 Its roots may grow old in the ground
    and its stump die in the soil,
9 yet at the scent of water it will bud
    and put forth shoots like a plant.” 
Job 14

and maybe we don’t know each other, and maybe we do, but I wonder if this whisper from heaven is for you today.

Because you matter. We all matter – and that is the long and short and confusing and overwhelming truth of it all.

the ones who ignore
the ones who stand up and take action
the ones who kneel down and win unseen wars
the ones who are self-obsessed
the ones who are self-loathing

all matter.

Today you matter. Through the throngs of crowds, the crush, the voices – a single trembling hand that reached out just to touch the hem of His garment. That one mattered.

In the empty, broken silence can you smell the scent of water?
Just the smallest of trickles that might bring life to an empty shell.

Can you believe you might see green shoots come in your life again? Is it too great a thing for God to achieve in you?

“Though you were ruined and made desolate
    and your land laid waste,
now you will be too small for your people,
    and those who devoured you will be far away.
20 The children born during your bereavement
    will yet say in your hearing,
‘This place is too small for us;
    give us more space to live in.’
21 Then you will say in your heart,
    ‘Who bore me these?
I was bereaved and barren;
    I was exiled and rejected.
    Who brought these up?
I was left
    but these—where have they come from?’”
Isaiah 49

Because that’s the Hope I feel for you too, little, broken, dry, skeleton leaf…. that it’s not just a scent of water that will Save you – it’s that there is more for you. There is life in you, and that life will give life, and you will not be sentenced to being barren and neglected.

Read these words today and let them settle deep down in your dry bones. Dare to let your mind, your heart, your faith, wander again to the promises you have been given. The One who promises you is faithful.

May you know today the scent of water.

You are loved. You matter. You are noticed and heaven whispers your name. There is life for you yet.

You shall be called by a new name,
Which the mouth of the Lord will name.
3 You shall also be a crown of glory
In the hand of the Lord,
And a royal diadem
In the hand of your God.
4 You shall no longer be termed Forsaken,
Nor shall your land any more be termed Desolate;
But you shall be called Hephzibah(my delight is in her), and your land Beulah(married);
For the Lord delights in you.
Isaiah 62