Thoughts As Summer Winds Down on a Saturday

My children headed back to school twelve days back. But it still feels a bit like summer, though this year it seems as if all the seasons are running three weeks ahead of schedule.

Though the scorching of July made headlines, and has been followed up in the news with leading questions by seemingly all-knowing journalists wondering if this is because of global warming, my electric bill says otherwise.

So too does the cool breeze of the morning as I sat in a chair in my backyard under the chestnut tree reading Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Like most of the classics, I’m nearing the half-century mark and only now getting around to reading it. Why now? This quote snapped me out of my reverie,

I don’t try to describe the future. I try to prevent it. —Ray Bradbury

As the gentle breeze gusted for a trifle, I watched as prematurely browned leaves glided down lazily as the days of summer wind down with them. It’s as if Bradbury knew where I would be when I finished reading his book, for he ends it by mentioning Montag’s memorized words from Ecclesiastes and Revelation, where seasons and leaves are painted on our mind’s eye,

To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. Yes, all that. But what else. What else? Something, something . . .

And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Yes.

So on this Saturday, one month before Fall officially arrives, we’ll head to the lake with friends, food, boats, and drink. We’ll frolick and feel refreshed in the waters that remind us of the living water that we yearn for, which will leave us never thirsty, but fulfilled.