Summer Fruit

It is Saturday morning, and we’re pushing toward mid-July.

Are you up early like me, trying to seek out a moment of quiet before the swelter settles over the day? Are you setting your sights on the day ahead, or maybe even the week ahead? Like me, are you dreaming of a big slice of peace today?

We’re approaching the middle point of school’s summer break, and I’m not sure I’ve slowed down to realize it quite yet. Just yesterday, on the verge of our camping vacation, I was the frizzy-haired, frazzled lady throwing Tootsie Pops in the cart while griping that the Corn Nuts that were so stinking hard to find weren’t even available in Original flavor! Ah, summer.

Summer has taken me by storm so far, as it may have for you, though it is a season I have traditionally looked forward to for the sake of the rest that it brings. Summer should offer a different schedule, at a slower pace, with a kinder and happier ethos. I actually want to be this idealist; I want to be this romantic. So, yes, as I lean toward middle-summer, I’m genuinely hoping for rest, peace, and happiness, all encased by some perfect temperatures.

Oh, but summer can be down-right grueling when the pace doesn’t slow. And summer feels like a complete haze when you’re split through with grief, missing a dear companion. Summer can make you weary when you are sick, and worried when sickness won’t wane. Summer will make you plain crazy when your job and your kids and your To-Do list are just waves crashing upon your vacation shore line. Ah, summer.

My prayer for you as you rise this morning, part-way through summer, is that gentleness would cover your life. Oh, that God’s breath would blow like a quiet, refreshing breeze into your life.

Get up and open a window so that the breeze can blow in. Watch the curtain flutter in the wind. Feel the peace carried upon that gentle breeze. Feel it, cool and soft, whispering across your skin. My prayer is for gentleness in your life. Let it surround you, and fill you.

Can you be gentle with yourself? Choose not to be forceful or disparaging toward yourself. Maybe you don’t need to rush right now. Hopefully, the grating beck and call of the urgent list will be silenced by gentleness. If you are cracked open with pain and suffering of any kind, let the gentle Spirit of God have a moment with you. Let gentleness hold you and help you today.

What if you let gentleness be the one thing you offer the world today? After all, who can speak harshly when gentleness covers them? Perhaps let your words, spoken to child or friend, spouse or stranger, be gentle. When gentleness is the goal, how simple the effort required. It could be that words are even too much, and you should simply smile.

The world aches with our sorrow and stress, and is bruised by our wild speed and brash carelessness. My prayer is that our calling today would be to walk gently and work gently, sharing the spirit of gentleness in the simplest ways possible.

I think some of you might be like me, and you do need to sit, just for a moment, in the gentle breeze.