Buh-Bye
Summer is officially over at 8:44 this morning, which happens to be the time I am typing this. It is fall, a season that brings out the best and worst of me.
I like fall, for some reason this time of year always feels more like New Years to me than January. Maybe that comes from being five and walking to school with my mom in matching mother-daughter dresses for the first day of kindergarten. The most significant thing I learned that year-paste tasted good. September is the month of new, new school supplies, clothes and schedules. As I grew up and became a mom myself, my life revolved around the "new" in my daughters life: her new school supplies, her new clothes, her new running shoes for cross country and track, her new schedule.
She's married now, so I'm back to my own season of "new" again. New ministry, projects, and studies. And since I'm on the far side of mid forties this year, a new physical weirdness about once a week. It's an exciting season, full of promise and expectations of coming fruit from all this "new". But alas, there is the "old" competing for it's existence, the stuff I wanted to do and didn't get to, the stuff I do and don't want to lay aside, and this is the part of fall that brings out the worst in me. Daily the battle rages as I try to hold on to old while reaching for new. It's September 22 and I'm getting tired already. Could the fall funk be just around the corner?
So on this day when the length of daylight is equal to the length of darkness or some science thing that defines an equinox, (I heard it from a weather man when I was washing dishes, sorry, I didn't take notes) I'm stopping and taking inventory. "Hitting the ground running" isn't something I want as a defining statement of every morning. I've said it before, we don't make time, God makes time, you and I take time or we don't. We use time or we don't. We spend time or we don't but only God creates time. Since God made it we should at least use some of what He made to ask Him what He wants us to do with today. I know, I know, you've heard it all before, but consider how longsuffering and loving God is to tell us once again:
Psalm 127:1-2 "Unless the Lord builds the house,They labor in vain who build it;Unless the Lord guards the city,The watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early,To sit up late,To eat the bread of sorrows;For so He gives His beloved sleep."
And this:
Psalm 139:16-17-16 "Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written,The days fashioned for me,When as yet there were none of them.
How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!How great is the sum of them!"
This day was fashioned for me, and one for you, too. Wave goodbye to summer and welcome fall with a fresh resolve to say every day "This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad! (and ask Your input on how to spend it, Lord!)
I like fall, for some reason this time of year always feels more like New Years to me than January. Maybe that comes from being five and walking to school with my mom in matching mother-daughter dresses for the first day of kindergarten. The most significant thing I learned that year-paste tasted good. September is the month of new, new school supplies, clothes and schedules. As I grew up and became a mom myself, my life revolved around the "new" in my daughters life: her new school supplies, her new clothes, her new running shoes for cross country and track, her new schedule.
She's married now, so I'm back to my own season of "new" again. New ministry, projects, and studies. And since I'm on the far side of mid forties this year, a new physical weirdness about once a week. It's an exciting season, full of promise and expectations of coming fruit from all this "new". But alas, there is the "old" competing for it's existence, the stuff I wanted to do and didn't get to, the stuff I do and don't want to lay aside, and this is the part of fall that brings out the worst in me. Daily the battle rages as I try to hold on to old while reaching for new. It's September 22 and I'm getting tired already. Could the fall funk be just around the corner?
So on this day when the length of daylight is equal to the length of darkness or some science thing that defines an equinox, (I heard it from a weather man when I was washing dishes, sorry, I didn't take notes) I'm stopping and taking inventory. "Hitting the ground running" isn't something I want as a defining statement of every morning. I've said it before, we don't make time, God makes time, you and I take time or we don't. We use time or we don't. We spend time or we don't but only God creates time. Since God made it we should at least use some of what He made to ask Him what He wants us to do with today. I know, I know, you've heard it all before, but consider how longsuffering and loving God is to tell us once again:
Psalm 127:1-2 "Unless the Lord builds the house,They labor in vain who build it;Unless the Lord guards the city,The watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early,To sit up late,To eat the bread of sorrows;For so He gives His beloved sleep."
And this:
Psalm 139:16-17-16 "Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written,The days fashioned for me,When as yet there were none of them.
How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!How great is the sum of them!"
This day was fashioned for me, and one for you, too. Wave goodbye to summer and welcome fall with a fresh resolve to say every day "This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad! (and ask Your input on how to spend it, Lord!)
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