• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer on…” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrines’ perspectives on a suggested subject. Every Friday a topic is printed inviting a response. Submissions are edited for content
• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer on…” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrines’ perspectives on a suggested subject. Every Friday a topic is printed inviting a response. Submissions are edited for content and length. Thoughts or suggestions for future topics are always welcome. Next week the suggested topic is summer, part two. The topic at the end of the column is for the following week.
Pastor Wayne Patton
Anahola Baptist Church
Summer evokes images of bright sunshine, golden afternoons with ice-cold lemonade and juicy watermelon slices and a hammock on a warm beach. During summer, everything seems more vibrant, hopeful and liberating.
And that is basically how summer is described in the Bible. God made summer (Psalms 74:17) and secured the yearly return of it with a covenant (Genesis 8:22). Excessive heat and drought characterize summer according to Jeremiah and David. Matthew quoted Jesus’ teaching that the approach of summer is indicated by shooting out of leaves on trees.
Samuel and Jeremiah stated that God graciously provides many kinds of foods for our use during summer. The ancients even had houses suited to summer activities (Judges 3: 20, 24).
Three proverbs urge us to be diligent and wise like the ant to provide winter food during the summer. Jeremiah’s statement that “the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved” is illustrative of seasons of grace.
As school ends children are often asked, “What are you going to do this summer?” Hopefully they, and all of us, will bask in the sunshine of God’s love and mercy.
Dr. James Fung
Lihu‘e Christian Church
There’s a song in our hymn book that is one of my favorites. One of the verses goes like this:
“Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest, sun, moon, and stars in their courses above join with all nature in manifold witness to thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.”
The poetry reflects God’s faithfulness in all of life’s seasons. God is the God of spring planting, the God of summer time growth, the God of the harvest and the God of the winter time chill. Just as God is there in all of the rhythms of nature, so is God there in all of the seasons of our lives as well.
There are times when we go forth with confidence, times when we rejoice in what we’re learning and how we’re growing. There are times when the ground of our soul lies fallow, when nothing seems to be going on, when it feels like we’re in a holding pattern. There are times when storm clouds gather, when the darkness of disappointment and disillusionment moves in hanging heavy on our soul.
In all of these seasons God is there, sometimes rejoicing with us, sometimes providing quiet encouragement, sometimes holding us together when it seems like our world is falling apart.
In the summer our lives may we find delight in the days of bright sunshine and blue skies and in the winter twilight of our lives may we find deep inner peace and contentment. And in all seasons, in all circumstances let us know that God is there. God’s faithfulness is one thing we never need to doubt. It endures through all eternity.
Lama Tashi Dundrup
Kaua‘i Dharma Center
This term, summer, applies outside spiritually to the season when the natural world is in full bloom, full of life, and all the elements of earth, water, sun, air, and space, are in harmony. Inside in one’s mind, summer is an open heart or love and concern for others, with a clear intellect, which is non judgmental and totally positive, in a state of equality and unity with everything and everyone, in a word a: Buddha.
Topic for two
weeks from today
• Will you speak to us on strength?
• Spiritual leaders are invited to e-mail responses of three to five paragraphs to pwoolway@kauaipubco.com.
• Deadline each week is 5 p.m. Tuesday.
