School’s out…so let’s get to work!
My parents were just up from South Carolina and we had a great visit. One of the things I recall fondly from family get-togethers as a kid was listening to the grown-ups telling family stories. In my Grandparents’ home there was a heating grate in the ceiling of the dining room. It was just a one foot square grate to allow warm air to flow upstairs. I recall lying around that grate with my siblings and cousins as the adults played games at the dining room table below. We weren’t interested in the games, but we were listening to the stories about our parents and grandparents (and sometimes us) that were being told around the table. It is a great memory of laughter and ribbing and history.
That memory came to life a little bit when my parents were here, as they told some stories of family times gone by, some of which I didn’t even remember. Some of the stories were about summer trips and I recall summer being a time of summer jobs like baling hay and straw, milking cows, mowing fields with a John Deere tractor and a bush hog, plowing and discing the field, and all the garden work.
As I think about summer now, it is full of activity as well. We started VBS today and saw many new faces. We have junior and teen camp, mission work camp, the canoe trip, the church picnic, and the mission trip to Haiti, all coming up. Pastor begins his catechism class in July on Tuesday mornings and once again the Teens will have Summer Servants after catechism for a couple of hours. We find a few projects around the church and work our way through several different things.
When I finished my formal education and took my first full-time job, I was a bit culture-shocked by the fact that work didn’t end when summer rolled around. I didn’t get summer break anymore. But realistically, I wasn’t lying around doing absolutely nothing. Summer break freed me up to do things I wasn’t able to do during school. I could bale hay all day and not just after school, etc.
So, school is out. Are you getting to work doing those things that you might not be able to do normally? Opportunities abound if you are out there looking for them and you have a willingness to work. There are many elderly who could use a helping hand, as well as many other opportunities.
In all of this though, we must not forget the Lord. In Awana and Youth Group this year we have had a strong emphasis on trying to get the young people reading their Bibles on a daily basis. We should not let this slip during the summer. Also, our personal church attendance shouldn’t be let go, because the sun is out. I can recall people when I was a kid, who when they had to move for a job relocation, their first priority in their move was a good church to go to, not good little league programs or proximity to the local gym.
We have forgotten that our God is a jealous God! Deuteronomy 32:21 says, “They have made me jealous with what is not God, they have provoked me to anger with their idols.” God will not give His glory to another, and He will not share His throne with worthless idols. We dare not place a higher importance on things, “busy-ness”, or anything above God. He alone is worthy and everything else is less, so much less.
Summer is here. Stop and take a look in all that you are involved in and see if God is in it, see if He is of highest importance in it. If He is not, then change is needed and this change is good!
“And do not turn aside after empty things
that cannot profit or deliver, for they are useless.”
1 Samuel 12:21
Pastor Scott Beaman
