More than any other summer I can remember, it seems that this summer…wasn’t. Have you ever felt this way?  I remember as a child the summers lasting forever, days that wouldn’t end, and the month of July that felt like many months all in one. But this year, it’s like I woke up, and it was the end of July.

The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes speaks a great deal about time. In fact in chapter 3, we get a beautiful teaching on this topic of time. The author of Ecclesiastes (Solomon) is basically saying that the secret to peace with God is to discover, accept and appreciate God’s perfect timing. The danger is to doubt or resent God’s timing, which can lead to despair, rebellion or moving ahead without the leadership of God.

With that Biblical backbone, this summer has been a time to plant. It began late because Easter was late, which pushed our Festival of Faith/Annual Meeting into June, which then pushed our vestry and staff retreats into mid and late June. During the retreats I planted seeds on the topic of Ambassadorship.

Then came the teaching at the New Wine Conference in late June at St. Andrews, Mt. Pleasant. It was exciting to teach in that venue, as I planted seeds on the topic of: “How Can I Live in the Overflow of the Holy Spirit?”

Then came the real highlight of the summer as Libby and I keynoted the Diocesan Marriage Conference at Camp St. Christopher. This was our first team teaching and I praise God for every minute of it. One of the best parts came after a teaching on how couples pray together. We gave them prayer tools and then told them to do it, and they did!  It was thrilling looking around the room seeing 45 couples praying together.

Well August is upon us which is simply amazing. As you receive this, I’m with Elizabeth and the children vacationing on Edisto taking in the last morsel of summer, and in the spirit of Ecclesiastes, enjoying the time to soak in those long summer days and longer starry nights.