Good morning…
Just before preparing last night’s family dinner, I turned in the manuscript for our 2018 Summertime Devotional. After hours and hours and still more and more hours, the passionate patchwork of our ninety-two favorite blog posts from this school year was sent as a cozy, completed quilt to the Creative Arts Director at Northside Church. She will perform her technical magic and on June 1st we will receive the colorful, Day One post from Breathe God In – Live God Out. What does this momentous moment of passing on a finished manuscript mean to me every year? Summer is near. Summer is almost here.
“Summer is the season when all the promissory notes of autumn and winter and spring come due,” writes Parker Palmer, “and each year the debts are repaid with compound interest. In summer, it is hard to remember that we had ever doubted the natural process, had ever ceded death the last word, had ever lost faith in the powers of new life. Summer is a reminder that our faith is not nearly as strong as the things we profess to have faith in – a reminder that for this single season, at least, we might cease our anxious machinations and give ourselves to the abiding and abundant grace of our common life.” (Let Your Life Speak, 109)
Two phrases grab me from Parker’s life-giving words: “promissory notes” and “anxious machinations.” I google each phrase and learn some new things. A “promissory note” is simply a promise to pay. A bit more formal than a handshake, a loan is made based on the maker’s ability to repay the debt. “Machinations” are attempts to plot, contrive, finagle one’s own self-centered plans, artfully or with evil purpose. Our “anxious machinations” exhaust us into trusting our Maker’s enduring promise: Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails (Proverbs 19:21, NIV).
The Creator of autumn and winter, spring and summer eventually makes good on every single promise. Season by season, we let go of our anxious plotting, our selfish scheming, our man-made maneuvering and we begin to grow faith in the powers of new life emerging from the death of yet another school year. As we learn to trust that somehow, someway the purpose of the LORD will prevail through every passing season, we give ourselves over quietly to the abiding, abundant grace of our common life.
Having waded through the words of two hundred and seventy-three past posts, posts which have guided our community through a very hard year, I feel a bit like Job looking back over our shared experience: My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you (Job 42:5, NIV).
…Sue…
