Summer is one of the blessings of God.

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.

Genesis 8:28

For many of us life takes on a different pace. Children are on holiday from school; quick suppers may be replaced with a leisurely barbeque; the frantic lawn-mowing slows down as conditions become hotter and dryer; holidays may be taken, or days off and days out arranged; visitors come to stay.

I know that many people continue to go to work, and farmers particularly have harvest, but even that busy-ness brings lovely changes – we so enjoyed a glorious tea provided for the combiners and trailer-drivers, and stood in the stubble looking at straw, surrounded by dust and swooping swallows!

What can you do to acknowledge this change of pace? Maybe you will still be busy for much of the time, but everyone, I hope, will find a day or two, or an evening or two, to luxuriate in warmth, the scent of flowers (and next door’s grilling supper), to sip a glass of lemonade (hem hem) and rejoice in beauty, and colour, and family, and the chance to “be” rather than always have to “do”.

Find that space. Find a truly “holy day” in the midst of your holidays, and remember it’s a blessing from God.