“What are you doing this summer?” It’s the perennial question for students and teachers and for families as the days grow longer and warmer and schedules seem to become a little freer. Backyard BBQ, late nights listening to the crickets and drinking sweet tea, a day at the pool or even the lake, vehicles packed and ready to leave for that long-awaited vacation – these are all some of the familiar sights, sounds, and experiences of summer. But have you stopped to consider how we as believers should live those days?
Before we rush off into a couple of months of summer activity, might I challenge you to consider the words of a 19-year-old man, “I frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again: Resolved, that I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age.”
Do you realize that just like retirement, a summer break offers us opportunities to make much of Jesus that our regular schedules may not afford? What if in old age you were to look back at the summer of 2021 and see the ways the Lord used your willingness to serve as a means to make an impact on the life of a child (and subsequently his or her family) as you served in VBS? Or the impact on the family that moved in across the street that you invited over for hamburgers(and that glass of sweet tea)?
The number of ways the Lord can use us for His glory this summer is seemingly infinite. We must simply be available.
By the way, that 19-year-old was Jonathan Edwards who wrote that resolution on July 8, 1723.