(I planted gladiolas this year,
but I should have staked them.)
Summer.
Summer is the time of heat and hard work. Planting, weeding, watering, harvesting.
Summer is also the time for vacations. Beaches, mountains, glasses of icy lemonade on the deck, laughter and stories around a campfire.
Lots of people love summer more than any other season. Others find summer exhausting, stretching, draining. Long hours of sunshine blend into long, hot nights of struggling with sweat-soaked bed linens.
If spring symbolizes our childhood, and autumn symbolizes the golden years of maturity, summer is the time in our lives when we are building families of our own. New babies are like the first shoots of seedling flowers emerging from a garden plot. Children who go to school and learn about the world, perform in beautiful concerts, and interact with stimulating friends are like stunning, blooming roses.
But what of the difficult days of summer? We just came through an intense period of heat that frazzled grass and drove us all inside to air-conditioning. Watering was imperative, and when we ventured out to do it, we sweated violently until we finished and went back inside, carrying the heat on our clothing and our skin, like hot loaves of bread drawn from an oven.
Some people's lives are like a beautiful year of strawberries, roses and apple harvest, while others experience the brunt of seeds that won't sprout, plants eaten by insects and mold, and brutally disappointing harvests.
Life is beautiful. Life is hard.
God is good, and it will be okay in the end.
"I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten," says the Lord. (Joel 2:25)
1 comment:
Summer is when the self-propeller mechanism on my lawn mower decides to quite working, daring me to grasp hot wrenches in the sun with sweaty hands and arms to get them covered in dry grass clippings mixed with perspiration. (:
Post a Comment