August 2009
The Dog Days of August
By the time you get this newsletter we will be into the month of August. Growing up around these parts, these days were called the “dog days of August”. We had very little (if any) air conditioning in the D.C. metropolitan area and often the only relief afforded from the heat was open windows, fans and an occasional cooling off period at night time.
Cars weren’t air conditioned either. Churches were anything but air conditioned. I remember when I first came to our church that the summer months were marked by an array of big fans that ran continuously in order to provide some relief from the oppressive heat. It always sounded like we were in the belly of a large military transport airplane called a C-47 and the echo was about to engulf you at any moment. I remember how overjoyed we were and how blessed we felt when one of the people who was attending with his wife offered to install some old used central air conditioning units from the place where he worked and have them put in the church at a really good cost to the church. We felt blessed beyond belief.
Today, air conditioning is pretty much taken for granted. I think nearly all of us have gotten used to having it. Funny how blessings go isn’t it? What was a huge blessing just a few years ago is “expected” and taken for granted today. I see this phenomenon all the time, both in myself and the church. We tend to take each new level of blessing as the baseline for what we come to expect and even think we couldn’t exist without it.
Sometimes I think it does us good to stop and think about all that we take for granted, especially when it comes to the blessings that God gives to us and especially when it comes to the church. I see us getting more and more complacent about the blessings our church brings to us. I see us taking it more and more for granted that our church will always be here, always thriving, always able to respond to our needs. I see us becoming and more apathetic about the blessings of our church and less and less able to see how blessed we are and how good we have it.
As the summer sun bears down upon us and the heat of the day gets sometimes oppressive I hope we will all stop and thank God for our blessings. I hope we will all stop and take special recognition for all the ways our church blesses all of us and we will show our gratitude on a regular and faithful basis. Stop and thank God for your church. Stop and thank God for having blessed us with a beautiful facility, a wonderful program and a congregation of people who love and accept us all. Stop and be sure you are doing your part in being a part of a thriving and blessed church. Oh, yeah, stop and soak up all the cool, beautiful, delightful, air conditioning that is ours!
Please make being a church a regular priority in your life! I’ll see you here!