“It must have been the summer solstice
When I first gave my heart to You
The first day of a brand new season
In a fevered passion for Your simple truth
It was the longest I’d ever felt for anything
And it gave my soul a song to sing . . . .

And with the spring comes the thaw
Melting my heart reviving all
It comes full circle and then
It’s summer solstice again

So can You throw Your arms around me and walk me home
I’ve wandered off way too far for way too long
And standing broken in this wilderness of shame
I have found my only strength is in your name
Oh, Father please can You undo what I’ve done
And get me back to square one

Back to the summer solstice

Take me back

I wanna go back” (Wayne Kirkpatrick, recorded by Susan Ashton).

Yes, it is summer solstice again. It’s officially the longest day of the year in terms of having the most daylight.

This one was hot. As in even standing in the shade, I was still sweating like the pig that knows he’s about to be bacon.

It felt like I was standing in front of an oven, only there was no aroma of anything baking, except maybe me.

Summer always makes me nostalgic for days I can never get back. It makes me miss people I will never see again in this lifetime.

I’m thinking about all those Johnson family reunions we used to have where all the cousins would make the drive down to Christiana, Tennessee and bring buckets of fried chicken (along with a multitude of casseroles and other foods) and tell stories of yesteryear. I miss those.

It’s easy to want to look back when you can’t really see what’s ahead, to long for the past when the future seems uncertain and scary.

That’s where a lot of us are right now. We’re holding on to what we know, what we can feel with our hands and see with our eyes and make sense of with our minds. We cling to the tangible, even if it’s what’s holding us back from becoming what God destined us to become.

Maybe faith is letting go of  those things and reaching out into the unknown with only the assurance that God will be there.

I love what G. K. Chesterton said: “Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.”

So here’s to hope, which is possibly the best thing going right now.

Hope is a good thing.