Greetings in the name of our everlasting God
Last week Lloyd invited us to reflect on summer and to “seize the joy of the season.”. This is a timely and important message for us to hear. I have always understood summer as a time to slow our pace and experience rest and renewal.
Our lives are full of many things, many of them good. But the reality is that these many good things, along with the difficult and trying things, can leave us tired and weary. We need seasons of life when we can step back for a time, intentionally slow our pace, and rest. We need holiday time when we can disconnect from the continuing routines of life and take a break to be renewed. And if “change is a good as a rest” maybe even the busyness of summer, if it’s a different kind of busy, can also feel like rest. I pray that is the case for many of us this summer.
But sometimes our need for rest, and disconnecting from the busy routines of life, is complicated by the urgent realities that seem to never rest, and relentlessly confront us and call for our attention. It is hard to disconnect when demanding decisions keep confronting us. It is hard to disconnect from a world struggling because of violence, war, climate crisis, economic change and uncertainly. It is hard to rest when those we love are lonely, struggling, suffering, and need us close. It can be hard to disconnect and rest…, but maybe because of the urgent realities we face, it is more important than ever.
I invite us to consider another reality. God our creator is an everlasting God who never grows weary and never losses sight of our needs. We can trust God to hold and care for what we cannot. God has the whole world in his hands!
28 Have you never heard?
Have you never understood?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of all the earth.
He never grows weak or weary.
No one can measure the depths of his understanding.
29 He gives power to the weak
and strength to the powerless.
30 Even youths will become weak and tired,
and young men will fall in exhaustion.
31 But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength.
They will soar high on wings like eagles.
They will run and not grow weary.
They will walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40)
God want to use us to bless the lives of those we love. God wants us to be channels of healing grace and love. But God invites us to trust that when we pause to rest, he will continue to be present and actively at work in the world and in the lives of those in need. God will keep being the everlasting God! So, trust that reality and rest in that truth.
I pray you find many moments of rest and renewal this summer. If you do, you will continue to run the race of faith and not grow weary, you will continue to walk the Jesus path of love and service and not faint.
Pastor Ray