The opportunities, joys and temptations, peculiar to the summertime are upon us. We have opportunities for serving our blessed Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, which we have not in winter months, or perhaps even in the spring and autumn. We may mention a few of these opportunities – the sowing of the seed of the Gospel by visitation of homes with Gospel tracts, preaching in the open air and even the carrying on of a couple of weeks meetings during vacation by those young men who are fitted by God to do this. “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest. Behold I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest” (John 4:35).
Summer vacation time may be a real time of joy for many of the Lord’s people, after a year of grind and strain in office, business, or factory work, to relax mentally and physically with their families away from the rush of city life, in the quietness and restfulness of the country. Dear child of God, your spirit will be refreshed and your soul blest, if you bring God into your vacation plans, and forget not the Lordship of Christ in this matter. Your joy will be increased if you have planned to locate in a place convenient to an assembly, and if you have the purpose before you to obey that precious command, “This do for a remembrance of Me.” Isolated little companies of God’s people may be cheered and encouraged also by your coming, if you are in the condition of soul to bring the presence of the Lord with you. Your help in the gospel meeting will no doubt also be much appreciated.
Summer vacation is a time of temptation. One cannot relax spiritually without peril to the soul. A servant of Christ, now with the Lord, once said, “If you are planning your vacation now, to be spent where you cannot reach an assembly, you have taken the first step away from God.” We have known children of God to go to summer cottages within reach of an assembly, and make the excuse on Lord’s Day that they have no garb with them suitable to appear at the Lord’s Table! What a contradiction of Romans 13:14, “Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof!” Dear sister in Christ, ere you purchase your summer clothes, most earnestly would we commend to you the reading of Dent 22:5. How very strongly does the Lord God speak to you! Will you read the New Testament in 1 Timothy 2:9? By thus obeying the Word of God, you will not need to reproach yourself for having stumbled another Christian, or cast a snare in the path of a brother in the Lord.
