Ah, those glorious days of summer, kissed by the golden sun!

I was sitting on the back steps under the sunflowers.  My children were running barefoot in the green grass.  I wanted to drink it all in and not miss a thing.  Summer won’t be around much longer.  The sunflowers only last for a few weeks.

We will never be exactly the same as we are right now.  My children are growing taller and getting smarter every minute.  Soon the toddler will be a little boy and the little boy will be a young man.  As I watch my children playing in the summer twilight, I think back to the summers gone by, memories now faded and misty with time.

The absolute glory of the end of school.  The days suddenly full of free time, balancing between excitement and boredom.

Discovering new things.

Riding bikes.

Playing in the cool creek water.  Catching fireflies that turn the dark into a magical fairy land.

Picnics outside.

 Birthday Parties.

  Fun and laughter.

Get-together with friends.

Now I am grown, and my friends are grown, and we have children of our own.

We still feel like we are teenagers.  Full of fun and adventure.  Youthful and energetic (at least during the first half of the day)!  Still trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up.

Yet we see that some of our babies have become teenagers.

Mature and responsible.  Standing on tiptoe to peak out over the horizon to catch glimpses of adulthood.  We realize that we are teenagers no longer.  We are adults barreling down the road of life to middle age.

And look at the fruit our lives have produced!

Nineteen children who play in the golden days of summer.

Soon these days, now crisp and sharp, will fade into memories.  School will start again.  The air will become cool.  The leaves will change.

But God’s goodness is unchanging, unwavering.  We can savor every drop of summer while we look forward to the glories of autumn.

The radiators turning on for the first time.  The nippy air, permeated with the smell of wood smoke.  Children romping in the leaves.  We can treasure the past, revel in the present, and joyfully anticipate the future. We are pursuing God and dwelling in His love, day in and day out.  We are going from glory to glory, going from good times to even better times.  We are confident in the promise that these golden days of summer will come around again.

Before we know it, a summer will come when children will go off to college.  Someday some of them will get married in the summer…perhaps to each other!  We may be gathering as childhood friends turned into family, watching our grandchildren playing barefoot in the grass.  And we will be different too.  Our hearts will be stretched and expanded to contain more love…more of the goodness of God…more golden days of summer.