Monday Morning Offering - 150

Image: George Mendoza

Good morning, good God!

School's been out for over a week now
and kids are off on summer vacation...

I remember such a time,
50 years or so ago,
when summer had no horizon:
a time and place as close to heaven
as a young heart might imagine...

Something in a child’s summer joy
comes, I'm sure, a gift from you, O Lord:
a taste of timelessness,
a promise of perpetual play,
a season of sun and unreasoned joy...

Vacation: heaven every summer!
Could the source of such a gift
be anything but divine?

But where did they go?
Where did those summers fly, Lord?
And I wonder,
I worry:
do I still believe in summer's promise
of pleasure unending, unbending
to calendars clocking each day,
tick-tocking away the weeks of warmth?

If I don't believe in summer, Lord,
how will I believe in you or in heaven
where summer's joy surely never ends,
where summer's timeless stillness
calms with peace all other seasons' grief?

I offer you these months,
my heart's July and August days:
come summer with me, Lord;
summer deep down in my soul;
restore my faith in summer’s time,
in rest, in joy, in play, in you...

Summer in my heart, Lord,
and dwell there as if time would never end,
as if all time were child’s time, eternal time
when school is always out and joy is ever in…

And let others summer in my shade, Lord,
and share whatever summer’s peace is mine to give,
whatever summer’s light is mine to shed…

Good God of every season,
of Monday mornings and every day this week,
come summer with me, Lord,
summer deep down in my soul…

Amen.

(Click here for an archive of Monday Morning Offerings)


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