Summer is America’s favorite season–homemade ice cream, a tan, sandals, cooking out, the beach, summer camp, long days, short nights, and the kid’s welcome NO SCHOOL!
From August to June, the average family’s life revolves around the children’s school activities. So summer has become a breathing space for needed “R&R&R&R&R” –Rest, Relaxation, Recreation, Reflection, and Refurbishment–vacations, yard work, house repair, family time, winding down from a frenetic pace.
For many, some of our best memories are of childhood summers, when the days seemed endlessly free to roam, explore and play.
There are the treasured memories: The family road trip vacation, with luggage on the car, roadside attractions, and postcards sent home. Maybe it’s setting up a lemonade stand, visiting the book mobile, making a clubhouse… or visiting the largest buffalo in the world, and even the largest ball of twine in the world.
But like the Griswalds, not all trips are fun. There are challenges, obstacles, detours and annoyances, but they did make it to Wally World.
I wonder, what would have happened to the Griswalds, if they had just stopped their journey when they lost their credit cards, or when the car broke down, or they lost their luggage.
Sometimes life gets tough. John the Baptist was a man of God. He was faithful to share the message God had placed on his heart. He introduced Jesus to the crowds as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” And yet when he ended up in a prison cell, he had questions. “Are you really the Coming One? Or should we look for another.”
The people of Israel were tempted to turn back. Turn back to Egypt. Turn back to the old life. Turn back to misery.
You see, long journeys are not always fun. Life can become a grind. It can be grueling.
Long journeys can be frustrating, because we are not always in the comfortable space of where we were, and we are not yet where we want to be; we are somewhere in-between.
But take heart. God is between you and your circumstances. He’s not only between you and your circumstances but over and present in your circumstances.
He was there to open the Red Sea for the Israelites. He dried up the ground, overthrew the enemy and led them over to the other side.
Sometimes God’s story takes us to places we wouldn’t choose to go on our own, but they are the very routes that develop maturity, integrity and perseverance.
Winston Churchill declared in his famous speech at the Harrow School in October 1941, at the time the Nazis appeared invincible, “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never— in nothing, great or small, large or petty— never give in!”
Consider St. Paul, who was imprisoned many times, beaten with rods, shipwrecked, and left for dead, yet he refused to give up. I love the way he viewed adversity and suffering: “We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Romans 5: 3-5).
John the Baptist who inquired, “Are You really the One,” seemed to have his doubts, but in the end, he discovered, that it was not his strength or faith that was great, but rather that His Savior was great and that He was kinder than we deserved.
Jesus even bragged on John.
Author Robert Fulghum was the graduation speaker at Syracuse University a few years ago. It was said of his commencement address that Fulghum did everything but lead the students, faculty and tuition-poor parents in a rousing rendition of “The Itsy-Bitsy-Spider.” Here’s a quote from his address:
I don’t’ know how many of you have ever looked up a waterspout, but it’s very dark and very dangerous-looking up there. It’s scary, but there is light that shines through. And the song says that while the tiny spider was climbing the spout, disaster struck – “down came the rain and washed the spider out”.
But the song doesn’t say “and the spider said ‘ah the heck with it’, and did something else.” No, the song says, “out came the sun and dried up all the rain, and the itsy-bitsy spider went up the spout again.” “And this my friends,” said Fulghum, “is the fight song of the human race.”
Where does our focus go during the dog days of summer?
When we are experiencing sickness, financial pressure, rocky relationships, and other anxieties, do we focus on God? Do we make our journey “looking unto Jesus/?”
He knows the burden I bear; He knows the stress that weighs me down. He knows the adversity I face. And He knows when to bring me out, how to bring me through.
Claiming God’s strength for the journey… Dennis