Originally written for Shepherd of the Ridge Lutheran Church, apply these ideas to your local context.

What are your plans for summer? Camping? Travel? Staying home and cleaning? Some big projects?

While summer is a time for recreation, remember that you’ve already been recreated through your Baptism. Each day is an exciting new day of fresh starts, because you start each day as a forgiven child of God.

Try this exercise: how do your daily activities remind you of your relationship with God? Make this game part of your family activity, whether with kids or out with spouse or friends: Going swimming? Remember your Baptism, and think about what it means to have your sin washed away. Going camping? How is our life here on earth like a camping trip before going to our eternal home, and how do we then live as campers here? Going on a date? Read Ephesians 5. A night in with your spouse? Read Song of Songs together in a suggestive voice (It’s a wedding night poem!) Spring (or summer) cleaning is also a good time to sort through your habits and ask which are beneficial and which are contrary to God’s will for you.

Many families just don’t talk about faith matters, thanks to encouragement from Satan and our sinful flesh, and our fallen world is happy to present all kinds of distractions, but as Jesus told Martha (Luke 10:39-42), only one thing’s necessary: being in God’s Word. Don’t let those distractions be more important to what is really the only important thing from which all other importances come from: the Word of God. (Stop and think about that for a minute. No, really, don’t read on. Stop, reread that last sentence, and ask how you’ve been doing that and how to change it. Jot down some notes.)

(Did you actually do that? Once you have, read on.)

God speaks to us through His Word, but His hand can be seen in our lives no matter where we go. It’s no substitute for the Word of God, and please don’t fool yourself into thinking that, but keep an eye open constantly for the hand of God in your life and in the world around you. He has promised to be with you (Matthew 28:20), and He is. And if you don’t see Him, look again.