All Too Short Vacation

For centuries the promises of summer have rolled off the lips of poets and songwriters. Poet or otherwise, I agree with Shakespeare: "Summer's lease hath all too short a date." 

It is the time of year when I begin to savor the days of summer, and recall what it felt like to run home from the last day of school with three months in my back pocket. For me summer vacations call to mind the joy of raking hay meadows at the ZN, outside of Saratoga, picnics at Robber’s Roost, Lake Marie, trip to Yellowstone, fishing at Jack Creek, and swimming at the Hobo Pool; all mentally scenic reminders of the origin of the word "vacation" itself; the Latin word "vacatio" means freedom.

Even so, I have always been sadly aware it is a freedom that does not last. Even as a child on summer break I knew that vacation would end and summer would fade away. It is, in fact, this quality that makes my vacations all the more sought-after; it is time set aside, time that shouts particularly of meaning because of the time with which it so contrasts. Yet regardless of its short lease, there seems a promise within the freeing days of summer that captures my heart and remains with me through the longest of winters.  

A poem by C.S. Lewis suggests that the promise I’m looking for is that the seasons of life will one day come to a grinding halt and death will be no more. It is the hopeful possibility that everyone has been created to know a freedom that endures.  Writes Lewis: 

I heard in Addison's Walk a bird sing clear

'This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

'Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees

This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.

'This year time's nature will no more defeat you,

Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

'This time they will not lead you round and back

To Autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

'This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,

We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

'Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,

Quick, quick, quick,

quick!—the gates are drawn apart.'

As I ruminated on those words I asked myself: What if the changing seasons, the fading of flowers, and the rebirth of summer are all signposts of the eternal? In his wisdom, King Solomon saw that written upon the seasons of time is the signature of the one who made them in Ecclesiastes 3. "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot... He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men". Rising sun and emerging summer declare that the heavens will neither forget nor forsake. Upon each waking flower is written the promise of resurrection.

It is this weighted promise that I find in my Christian worldview carrying through the seasons: Christ has stopped the cycle of death and is coming back to bring us, His children, where He is. The effect of such a promise on the life of a believer is well illustrated in hymnist Fanny Crosby. She wrote:

I know in

whom my soul believes,

I know in whom I trust;

The Holy One, the merciful,

the only wise and just.

I know in whom my soul believes,

and all my fears depart;

For though the winter winds may blow,

'tis summer in my heart.

Crosby wrote of the Christian hope she saw written across her life. Though blinded as an infant by a doctor's error, she saw the light of Christ, and subsequently chose to carry the promise of summer with her.

Father, God, I would like to think that every season presents a similar option of holding near the hope of Christ and the promise of resurrection, until a day when summer comes true. Amen