Noonday Sun

Summer days are heating up in Texas. I feel like the fourth of July celebrations mark the midpoint of summer fun. The time between Memorial Day and Labor Day is the time to soak in the sun. Catching rays in the backyard, on the lake, or a sandy oceanside, there is one experience that is always the same. When the sun peaks in the middle of the day, the rays are strong. They toast you. For my fairer skin friends, maybe the rays roast you even under your giant hat and layers of sunscreen. The presence of the sun rays is strong. There is no escaping them. After the sun rays move along, behind a cloud or cascade toward sunset, the heat from the sun remains with you. My personal experience is that the warmth my body feels refreshes and recharges me down to my core.

Coming home from the long holiday weekend, I am sun kissed as I ponder the first half of summer and think about ways to enrich the last half of the summer days on the horizon. My mind keeps thinking about the heat from the sun. Small doses of basking in the sunshine refresh my physical body the way my soul recharges around a wise mentor or a decade-long best friend. When I am around people filled with the goodness of God to the point their joy for the Lord radiates like the noonday sun, it changes me. The presence of God is strong in their life. I feel recharged around them. I want to spend more time with them. Do you have a person in your life like that? They communicate with a controlled temperament. They process disappointment with grace instead of frustration. They respond to life’s curveballs from a place of peace and not anxiousness. Even on a bad day, the gloom of circumstances does not bring them down, but they choose to give thanksgiving to God with perspective that life on earth is only temporary. They look at the scope of circumstances through eternal lenses.

I want to be like that. I want God to shape me into a person that radiates authentic gratitude and humility. I do not want to shy away from the bad things or the hard things. They will come. Instead, I want my life to be more distracted by the glory of God on display than all the hard things I fee like I am enduring alone when that is just a bad perspective. The passage in Isaiah 58 teaches me new things each time I open to it. While reapplying sunscreen to avoid a sunburn, the phrase “satisfy your desire in scorched places” absorbs into my mind. Isaiah reminds me that the Lord knows my deepest desires and chooses to graciously fulfill them at the perfect time. This refreshes me to keep going in times of weariness and uncertainty of what the last half of summer looks like or the next decade of my life.

Maybe you are in the heat of summer metaphorically speaking. Things are heating up. You feel roasted. You are seeking refreshment. Will you choose to believe the truth in Isaiah 58 that the Lord is in your life, the Lord knows your deepest desires, and the Lord will fulfill them? It might not be today, but I can confidently say the best way to recharge is in the Lord.