This past weekend we said goodbye to summer. I blinked and it was over. I am one to dread the fall and winter seasons. The moment the days go dark at 5PM I begin to feel like I'm suffocating.
Most people have exorbitant electricity bills in the summer. Our light bill historically runs high in the winter. I turn on every recessed light I can find as well as table lamps, and outside flood lights. You could land a plane on our home in the winter. I have to have the light. I can not live without it. I get cranky, incredibly depressed, snappy, and irritable.
When the light leaves and I'm in the dark I long for summer. I crave UVA, UVB, and any other UV light that I can get my hands on!
I find my light deprivation anxiety rather prophetic. It's actually pretty biblical. Jesus is the light. Without Him the world is dark. All goodness, hope, redemption, salvation, and sanctification is suffocated into the abyss. Into the darkness.
Summer involves everything that I love. The ocean, sun, boating, long summer days, no pressing schedule, shooting skeet in the soybean fields, fresh fruits & vegetables, cookouts with friends, being able to see my kids more frequently, lightening bugs, crickets, geraniums in my window boxes, ferns on my front porch, and ice cold sheets when its 110 degrees outside. Yes, I love them all.
Geographically speaking, here in the South, summer really does go on until early October. The temperatures remain in the 80's. {But} there is a smell in the air, a feeling, that bellows out summers end by Labor Day. The beaches are less crowded, college football and high school sports begin. Exciting new season to some.
It's very easy, in the hustle and bustle of back to school, to walk right back into the world. It's easy, if we are not communing with Jesus every day, to fall in step with everyone else. A gossipy conversation in the carpool line. An innocently enough lunch conversation about someone's marriage. A judgmental comment about a co-worker recently back from vacation.
If we say that we belong to Him we must walk with Him 100% of our lives--not just sometimes. It is not biblically possible to be of this world and say that we are lovers of Christ.
John does a brilliant job of explaining light and dark. "This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth."-1 John 1:5-6.
This fall, as the days become shorter, your schedule becomes fuller, and the darkness starts earlier take a deep breath. Ask The Lord to walk it out with you. Be who you tell Him you are--His child. Show the world that you are different. Let the light of Christ in you be the warmest part of someone else's dark day.
"The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our
God stands forever."-Isaiah 40:8
God stands forever."-Isaiah 40:8
