Dear Friends:

Summer has arrived! I love this time of year, the days are long and the sun is bright (most of the time!). The leaves on the trees are so green. The lawn and field grasses seem to provide a seemingly endless carpet wherever there is an open space. The daytime temperatures can be oppressive, but having spent my youth in Florida, the heat brings many memories. Living here in the foothills we are often blessed with gentle breezes even on the warmest of days. All in all, summer time is a wonderful gift from God for us to enjoy. It is a time to relish life and rejoice in it.

The spring is behind us. The season of school graduations and other recognition ceremonies is over. Whether it was a 4K “graduation ceremony” or a university commencement exercise awarding a doctoral degree, that time of year is past. Graduations always bring a set of mixed emotions for the participant, at least they have for me. Even if your most recent “graduation experience” was decades ago, I’m sure you can still remember the mixture of elation and anxiety the experience produced. Graduates are elated that they have come to the end of their pursuit. The long hours and the endless studying are now at an end. However, graduations also produce anxiety because now there is something new on the horizon. After graduation comes the next step, whatever that may be; maybe it’s First Grade or maybe it’s a paying job, or graduate school. In every case, however, what lies ahead – during the summer - it is still something that is in the future. So, in the summer, whatever it is that lies ahead, is still ahead! For now, it represents the unknown and the unknown ALWAYS produces anxiety in us.

Without a doubt, the inherent structure of school terms and academia is more explicitly compartmentalized than “real life”. Every year one phase comes to a close and in the fall a new phase unfolds. One door closes and another suddenly appears waiting for us to open it. Life beyond the school environment is less structured, more fragmented and chaotic, but we experience again and again the feeling of accomplishing one thing and at the very same time begin worrying about the next challenge. Keeping the long view in mind, our human life cycle is inherently linear. As we age, grow, and develop we move from one phase to the next.

Throughout our lives we encounter anxiety producing circumstances. Even as we may enjoy some sort of milestone (weddings, the birth of children, material gain, degrees, etc…) it is inescapably a part of our humanity to simultaneously experience anxiety about what comes next. Along side our happiness seep in dark thoughts and fears about tomorrow. Our new spouse may prove to be a different person than the one we think we have married. Our children may bring us heartbreak. We may invest our material gain unwisely, or someone may try to steal it.  Once we start to work in the field that we have trained for, we learn that in reality we don’t like that work, or we aren’t really suited for the challenge. One way to express this human characteristic is to say that within the heart of every triumph and moment of happiness is also planted the seed for future failure.

Our human anxiety about tomorrow is simply part of how we are made. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus spoke directly to our human anxiety. He clearly understood this aspect of being human. In Luke 12:27-28 it reads, “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you – you of little faith!”

Jesus calls us to trust in God’s providence for our lives, no matter what the next step may be in our lives. Given the witness of scripture we know that God loves us and cares for us beyond our ability to understand. So as one door in life closes, there will always be another waiting to be opened. Let us open each new door with faith and trust in the God who clothes the fields with beautiful lilies.

And in the meanwhile, let us enjoy the simple pleasures of summer! May we be reminded that God who made all the wonders of the season, also made us and cares for us as his very own lily! You are precious and beautiful in his sight!

Blessings,

Marc