It has taken me a few years, but I’m getting used to summer in Dallas. Our first summer was marked by record setting heat: 45 consecutive days of 100+ degree temps. “Welcome, y’all!” Just as the wind of my childhood in the Texas Panhandle left an injurious impression on me, so too did the heat of 2011. Summer was not to be trusted.

I think I’ve finally made peace with summer in Dallas. I know that it can blazing hot - as it has been today and yesterday. Or, there can be a random storm with less heat, as it was last week. Mainly, though, I love that in the summer with a little precipitation, Dallas comes alive. The trees and grass are in their most vibrant green, flourishing where they were planted. So summer has come to mean growth and fullness and life along with heat.

Summer has also come to mean slowing down. That’s what we do at St. Bart’s. We pause our Pastorates for the season instead gathering in monthly Dinners for 9. We redirect some of our energy for Summer Worship Nights - a great space of resting, praising God in song, abiding with him and his people in his presence.

Make sure you are resting. “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,” said God at Sinai when he delivered his covenant to Moses and the people of Israel. Enshrined in this command is more than ‘go to church once a week.' It reveals to us what health looks like. “For God made the earth in six days, and on the seventh he rested.” If God, who needs nothing, rested from his labor of benevolently creating the universe from the overflow of his being, then we, too, limited, finite, broken, yet made in his image, should also rest. In everything we do let us “work as unto the Lord,” but by all means let us also rest.

I hope you make time to rest this summer, to cease from the activities of producing and rely on the God who has produced and provided so abundantly for our life and salvation.

Jay+