A Summer Blessing

Hello Friends,

I hope you are doing good and are enjoying this new season of summer! It’s hard to believe that today marks one full week of summer! Last Sunday, at 3:24am, while you were still sleeping, summer officially began giving us the longest day of the year. I don’t know about you, but I’m glad that summer has arrived–even though I’m not a fan of the heat and humidity that often accompanies this time of year. Summer is filled with adventures, excitement, memories, and we can’t forget about the many projects that are calling our name. How are you going to enjoy this new season, this season of summer? I can’t wait to hear about it!

As summer begins, I simply want to offer you a simple summertime blessing that was written by Pastor Cathy Hall Stengel of Pendleton United Methodist Church in North Tonawanda, New York. May this blessing settle upon your heart as you embrace this new season:

May God bless these summer weeks…

Bless your joyful chaos of coming and going

Bless your love of sunlight and warm breezes

Bless the cool nights with bursts of stars

Bless your ears ringing with the play of children and parents calling them in or shooing them out,

Yes, even bless your ears with the sounds of lawnmowers and trimmers.

May God bless the memories summer brings…

Summer picnics wherever they landed

Trips to parents and grandparents

Reunions flooding our hearts with longing and leaving

Fishing or crabbing, I can catch a bigger one!

Travel games as fields and towns flashed by our smudgy car windows

Scout camp and vacation bible school, was it always the hottest week of the year?

May God bless our belonging…

You may come and you may go

From home, from church, from work

As you are blessed, may we be blessed

When you bring blessings back to share,

Brightening worship with your presence

Your prayers and your just you kinds of gifts.

May God bless you this summer.

Have a Blessed Summer!

Your Friend, Holy Spirit!