Quiet Summer Days
I love to remember the quiet summer days of my childhood. I didn’t know any children whose summers were filled with one camp and activity after another. My main activities weren’t really activities at all, unless you call sitting in the clover making clover chain necklaces and searching for four-leaf clovers an activity. I made doll clothes and listened for the popsicle truck to round the curve below our house. I sat in our big black swivel chair holding our little dog Spicy.
I pretended I was a circus performer as I rode my bicycle on the church sidewalk across the street from our house. I visited Daddy at work at his daddy’s grocery store behind our house — that was a treat because it had air conditioning and ICEE®’s which Daddy Leland let me squirt into the red and blue striped cups all by myself.
My brother Steve and I played Monopoly®, played army, and danced the Mexican hat dance in front of Mother and Daddy’s dresser with its big mirror. We walked down the street to the playground where Steve played baseball, and I swung on the swings.
For one week each summer, we walked across the street to Vacation Bible School in the church basement for a fun morning of Bible classes and refreshments. During another week, our family took a Sunday through Thursday morning vacation.
Childhood was a quiet and peaceful time, uncluttered by one expensive, time-consuming, and stress-filled activity after another.
I hope your children and their mama are looking forward to some unplanned summer days. Evidently God is pleased when people rest and enjoy and find peace and have fun. When the prophet Zechariah wrote about a future time of blessing for Zion, he said:
Thus says the Lord of hosts,
“Old men and old women will again sit in the streets of Jerusalem,
each man with his staff in his hand because of age.
And the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets.”
Zechariah 8:4-5