Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence. ~Vince Lombardi
This fall while I was walking in my fields here on the farm, I decided to find a perfect leaf. I looked for one that had turned a lovely autumn color of red or orange or bright yellow. I wanted to take a picture of that perfect leaf to post on my Facebook page to share the ordinary gifts of nature with my friends there. 
But a perfect leaf was not as easy to locate as I’d thought. The leaves were lovely all in a colorful bunch up in the trees. Some of those trees were a perfect splash of color in the fall sunshine. But each time I focused in on one leaf, there was some flaw. A hole chewed in it by an insect. An imperfection in the color. A ragged edge left by some storm during the year. The leaves had all been through a year that left them battered and no longer perfect once I looked closely.
That made me think about how people are like those leaves. We get battered by the storms of life. We are chewed up by the various bugs of temptations. We wilt in the heat of the trials that come our way. We have flaws. We lack perfection. Our friends and family, everyone we meet, they too lack perfection. I know you’ve heard this said dozens of times and may have even said it about yourself when you didn’t quite hit the mark on something you were trying to do. Nobody’s perfect. We say that and laugh. And you know what? We are absolutely right. We aren’t perfect. We will never be perfect. Only Jesus was perfect. Perhaps that’s why He still loves us even with our flaws. He does, you know. The Bible says so.
And we love our family and 
friends in spite of their lack of perfection and human weaknesses.
Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses. (Ann Landers)
I’m sure there could very well be a perfect leaf out there undamaged by the rigors of summer, but if so, I didn’t find it. In spite of that, I still found beauty in the leaves and the autumn colors. That’s how we are too. We’re not perfect. We’ll never be perfect, but with the help of the Lord, we can still be a blessing to those we meet in our daily lives.
Whether the leaves are perfect or not, do you enjoy the beauty of autumn?
Has someone been a special blessing to you in spite of his or her lack of perfection?
Comments 6
This was so good, enjoyed this very much Ann…
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Thanks so much, Phyllis, for your encouraging words.
Will you be posting photos of autumn leaves?
P.S. we don’t have leaf color changes here in Florida. I miss seeing that…..I saw it once in my life, when I lived up in Wisconsin for a year.
My husband. Neither of us are perfect, by a long shot, but we have blessed each other immensely. And, we’ve become best friends. That’s a rare blessing nowadays.
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A blessing and a very good thing, Nancy. So good to have a husband and a friend all rolled into one.
The leaves are mostly gone now. I did post several fall photos and even one video of the autumn colors. You can check it out on my Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/anngabhart. You don’t have to scroll down and search for it. You can just click on the photos or videos and pull up the ones you’d like to see if you’re interested. I would miss seeing the seasons change if I lived in Florida although there are winter days when the Florida sunshine would be very nice.