7:13 p.m. and the heat is still over 100. Cindi and I went for a walk and as we strolled along we conversed over how we never in our whole lives remember such a summer as this. I remember hearing mom talk about a summer back in the 1930's that was so hot that they actually put the dishes into the spring to cool them off before serving dinner on them. I try to imagine what this would be like without air conditioning, knowing full well that there are folks out there without it - God have mercy on them!
But the intense heat simply moves my desires fast forwards toward the fall and the winter. Did God make us so? Always reaching ahead? Often enjoying, but never quite content with, what is? Maybe so. Always an elusive something out there, beckoning us on, enticing us forward. After all these years you'd think it would simply be given up as a silly game. Yet somehow it seems to me to grow more serious, more intense as the years move ever more rapidly forward - like a river gathering momentum as it rushes toward the falls you can sense, but not see, up ahead.
For truly He made us for Himself, and "our souls are restless until they rest in Thee." Behind all the seasonal discontent, our souls themselves may be sighing, groaning beyond words, for that final beauty which is crisper than the autumn day with that deep October blue sky; shimmering more brightly than the moonlight over the virgin drifts of snow; more fragrant than the sweet apple blossoms in the Springtime; and more intense than the kiss of the sun this July. The beauty of the Day without Evening in the Kingdom of our Father!
Maybe, just maybe, behind the temporal longings rings the sighing cry of the holy church: Maranatha!
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THE FIRST BOOK
Confessions of the greatness and unsearchableness of God, of God's mercies in infancy and boyhood, and human wilfulness; of his own sins of idleness, abuse of his studies, and of God's gifts up to his fifteenth year
GREAT art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite.1 And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness that Thou resistest the proud:* yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee. Grant me, Lord, to know and understand which is first, to call on Thee or to praise Thee? and, again, to know Thee or to call on Thee? for who can call on Thee, not knowing Thee? for he that knoweth Thee not, may call on Thee as other than Thou art. Or, is it rather, that we call on Thee that we may know Thee? but how shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? or how shall they believe without a preacher? and they that seek the Lord shall praise Him:* for they that seek shall find Him,5 and they that find shall praise Him. I will seek Thee, Lord, by calling on Thee; and will call on Thee, believing in Thee; for to us hast Thou been preached. My faith, Lord, shall call on Thee, which Thou hast given me, where
1 Ps. culv. 3; cxlvii. 5. 2 Jas. iv. 6; 1 Pet. T. 5. •Rom. tu 14.
Yes, the summer is making me look forward all the more to hunting season.
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