Growing up under the southern hemisphere sun, “summer” described a couple of weeks which included final exams, Christmas and New Year holidays, and a flurry of travel plans to get to the beach and make the most of the longest, warmest days. It FLEW by.
Moving to the USA brought a different reckoning for summer: 11 weeks? What could possibly fill such a long stretch of time? And yet, twenty years into it, I’m finding that summers creep…. and then fly by. Where did the time go? It’s hard to say. But we have learned this: unless we plan to have some definite rhythms and goals on the calendar, we can “lose” an entire summer with good—and yet unfulfilled—intentions.
The antidote to this is intention. Specifically, the intention to prioritize the most important things—things worth doing and things we want to remember—over the time-swallowing daily things. Perhaps that’s putting the effort in for a camping trip like we did for Father’s Day weekend. Honestly, it’s a little ridiculous to live in a perfectly comfortable house and then pack an entire portable house and kitchen up into a car to drive a distance, unpack it and live in the sun for a few days. But it’s worthy use of time for the fruit of connection in our family.
And so, too, we need to set our spiritual intentions for the summer. What do you have time for now that maybe you don’t during the rest of the year? What regular rhythms—like home group perhaps—aren’t there during the summer that you might miss and need to plan around? Don’t let the whole summer crawl—and then fly—by without thinking about what your relationship with God will look like in three months’ time. Did you get closer? Or did you just kind of co-exist and drift?
It’s convicting to me even to type this. I confess I’ve been thinking about my kids and my house and where I want us all to be in August. But the truth is I have a Father (and YOU have this same Father) who would love to spend some quality time with us this summer. He’d like me to know him better. He’d like to see growth. He’d like us to have some memories shared.
Plan for that connection with God this summer. Maybe it’s reading a book and inviting some friends to talk it through with you (Michael Wear’s “The Spirit of our Politics” or dig deeper into the Parables with our sermon series). Maybe it’s ambitious: read the Bible in three months. It can be done! Or use the YouVersion bible app on your phone and try one of their devotional reading plans. Or put a couple dates on your calendar to go for a morning walk with just you and God. But whatever it is: plan for it, like you would to see a friend.
Let’s make the most of these good days God has given us together,
Pastor Bronwyn