Love Is Forever
by Rev. Robert J. Hermley

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For weeks, I had passed the park that was near to my dwelling as I hurried home from work each night.  The changing color of the leaves on the trees told me that Autumn was already upon us.  The leaves had already begun to fall, and reminded me of so many scattered notes to tell me that soon the trees would be completely bare and that Winter would soon close in with its cold and snow to cover the trees and ground with its fluffy white blanket.

Winter was always beautiful with its frost and icicles which decorated the trees like so many transparent toys for the world to marvel at after a long and heavy snow.  It was always a wonderful sight; but it was cold in Winter.  That thought had always left me with a feeling of loneliness and a longing for Spring.  For some reason, I had always been a Summer person, responding to sun and warmth; for all its beauty.  Winter represented a coldness, a chill and frost and elicited in me a desire to stay indoors and eagerly await the coming of Spring.

As I stopped this particular day to drink in deeply the fleeting beauty of the falling leaves that still remained, an old man and woman walking by stopped for a moment under one of the trees.  I could not hear what they were saying, but I was struck with the look of love which passed between them as they stood amid the falling leaves.

The old man took his wife's hand in his as if to assure her that he would never let anything harm her; that he would always be there for support.  It was a beautiful and touching sight, a picture of stability and strength.

Seasons are governed by nature, I thought; they must of necessity change.  They come and go.  The love of the old man for his wife, on the other hand, was forever.  Neither snow, nor cold, nor frost could change it.  Leaves would fall, snows would come and go, Spring would flower again - and, still, the old man's love would be forever new, forever fresh.  His love, his commitment to his marriage vows, all eternal - untouched by the change of seasons.