Praise
the Lord for another summer day which is going to be wonderfully and beautifully
bright and pleasantly very warm. It will be almost cloudless. Tonight promises
to be cloudless with a full moon. Alice and I walked for over 3 miles last night
under the starry sky with the moon fully beaming down its gentle light. I love
summer time.
I had a
note from our friend Sue, from England, who wrote that it has been raining and
cloudy there. It is Monsoon season in Orissa, India. Schools and colleges just
re-opened for another year and are in full swing. When the monsoons arrive at
full blast the fresh and clean water comes gushing from the hills and the
mountains. Dry springs bring forth fresh waters profusely once again. The animal
and plant kingdoms profoundly experience life afresh and anew. The hills and the
mountains become lusciously green. The flocks graze in the pastures and the
fields and valleys blossom again. Praise the Lord for the beauty of His
earth.
Our
senses tell us summer is here again when we see the sunset only just before
bedtime, when we see fields of rippling clover and rising corn, when we smell
the freshly-mown grass, and when we hear the chirping of crickets and songbirds
and the unrestrained laughter of school children in the streets.
Shakespeare wrote "A Midsummer Night's
Dream", in which he noted "summers in a sea of glory!" He reckoned no tune
to be as "sweet as summer." Robert Browning observed, "Wanting is what? (It's)
summer." Jesus described how life for His followers would be
watching for the sign that "summer is nigh!" What's so entrancing about summer?
For one thing, there's summer sunshine.
When
Noah's flood was over, the Lord God pledged that "while the earth remaineth,
seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night shall
not cease" (Genesis 8:22). The psalmist (74.17) thanked God, "Thou hast set all the borders of the earth;
thou hast made summer and winter." Solomon said, "As snow in summer ... (so)
honour is not seemly for a fool" (Proverbs 26:1). In contrast, Isaiah (28:4) figured that only a fool would eat "the first ripe fruit
before the summer." Whereas snow and cold characterize winter, sunshine and ripe
fruit are ensigns of summer!
Shakespeare
suggested we endure "December snow by thinking on fantastic summer." Chaucer
hailed, "Welcome, summer, with thy sun. (Thou didst) winter's weather overtake."
Poet Emily Dickinson confessed, "When I count it all ... the sun. the summer,
then the heaven of God -- and then the list is done."
We who are
believers on the Lord Jesus Christ will daily scan our skies to see the Son "of
righteousness rise with healing in His wings." Ever and always we're looking for
Jesus. Look to the Son and the shadows of life will all fall behind.
I heard of a
man who loved sunshine so much that he built his house with three huge windows:
one facing east from the kitchen, where he'd eat breakfast; one to the south,
where he'd eat lunch; and one to the west, where he'd eat dinner. He reveled in
the sunshine. E. Stanley Jones, that great Methodist, missionary to India,
would often tell of two newly born-again college girls. Exclaimed one, "I've
swallowed sunshine"; and the other, "I've got a big smile down inside!" Peter,
James, and John would never be the same again, after, on the mountaintop,
beholding Jesus transfigured before them in resplendent celestial light.
Moreover, Saul of Tarsus was transformed into Paul the Apostle in a midday
encounter with Christ, the Light, whose Sonshine that noonday made the sun in
the sky fade into a flicker by comparison.
Jesus said that when terminal war threatens to exterminate
man, when famine, earthquakes, plagues - -- wickedness and antichrists become
ubiquitous, believers are to "lift up your heads and look, for your redemption
draweth nigh." Eternal summertime is the Christian's
future.
In
Christ,
Brown
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