This past weekend marks the “official” close to summer. All kids are back in school, pools are closed, and vacations have ended. The skies of of the road trip, full of optimism and adventure are replaced with the skies of a morning commute…full of routine and familiarity (and occasionally resentment). The smells of camp fires, mosquito spray, grilling, and the intoxicating ocean air are all but a faint memory that waits to be rekindled next summer when time affords. The memories shared this summer will most likely fade only to be remembered after you upload your photos onto your computer. Summer is an often romanticized season full of trips to the beach, the ballpark, and spending extra time with people you care for. This is because it’s the season where we are given a break from normalcy and permitted to enter into a paradoxical season of rest and adventure. Regardless, at this point we crave just one more vacation, one more s’more, and one more sandcastle.
In our family, the rhythms of summer aren’t as deeply imbedded since our oldest just started preschool and we live in Southern California. We have potential for sunburns, trips to the beach, and grilling any day of the year. The craving of summertime together as a family is more found in my memories that my present, though this summer we had a great time hitting up local beaches, the Santa Barbara zoo, seeing family, and running an art camp for kids. Summer is there, but certainly not as pronounced as it is in those who are entangled in the calendars of our educational system. My eyes were opened to my slightly skewed perspective as I recently gathered with some friends. We sat down to do some planning for our church, and I noticed that there was a different approach to things in the fall. There was an openness to more, less guarding of schedules that await the impromptu, and even a subtle sigh of relief to enter into autumn’s structure.
As we say goodbye to the August’s insufferable heat, we exclaim “I need a vacation from my vacation!” And we’re left with the warm days of early September to taunt us as we sit at desks and return back to normalcy.
At this point in the year we have a choice…to mourn or rejoice. We can be frustrated that we have to go back to homework, bosses, less time catching up, and much less fresh fruit, or we can embrace that which is ahead. Our choice resides solely in our trust in Jesus. In the 3rd Commandment (4th for my Evangelical friends) God commands us to Sabbath. Every week we should set aside one day where we should not work. This is the rhythm God established for life at creation. We’re not built to be 24/7 people. We’re created for rest. The purpose for God inserting this rhythm is multifaceted. It exists to protect worship (we now have no excuse to step away from worship), but wrapped up in all of that is that God is shifting our perspective on life…a perspective where He is God, and you and I are not. It’s a perspective where we enjoy all that He has given us. We need the day off so that we remember why we do what we do. We need the day off because otherwise we might think that we are God…holding the whole world in our hands. We work and go to school to support our family and to grow as a person, but ultimately, we go for the God who created us and redeemed us and will come again to recreate us…to honor Him with our gifts and to obey His calling to work in our vocations…to keep Him as God and avoid the dangers of self worship.
Summer can be Sabbath, too. It’s not just Sabbath…it’s Jubilee where we celebrate on a grander scale all that God has done in our lives. It’s the rest we need once a year to recalibrate our minds and hearts to God as Creator, Redeemer, and Friend. We were created for this, too…to rest…rejoice…discover.
So, don’t mourn the adventure of summer…rejoice in autumn, because it is in autumn that you enter back into the work that you were created for. You were created for more than making s’mores and sandcastles. You were created to be a student, an engineer, an artist, an IT guy, or a teacher. You can find joy in what happens as Labor Day ends, because the optimism of the real you appears, and the goodness of discovering how to use your gifts becomes an adventure that always seems to bear new fruit.
Autumn begins the season of you living as the real you…the one who is fearfully and wonderfully made…the one who works out his salvation with fear and trembling. You were given perspective of your calling as you pealed the sun burn from your shoulders…now your healed shoulders exist to carry a burden for your fellow man…the burden that you’ve been created for…the burden you’ve been called to…the burden that was handed down to you by the living God. It’s not a burden too heavy…it is a light burden.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” -Matthew 11:28-30
This is the real you. Living in the eternal rest given to you by God, and finding joy in the calling you’ve been given. The familiar awaits. Meet it as one who has been given earthly rest this summer and eternal rest from Jesus.
Welcome to autumn….you were created for this.
todd niebling 