Blessings of Summer

Jeremiah 31:34-35

No longer will they teach their neighbour,
    or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
    from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
    and will remember their sins no more.”

This is what the Lord says,

he who appoints the sun
    to shine by day,
who decrees the moon and stars
    to shine by night,
who stirs up the sea
    so that its waves roar—
    the Lord Almighty is his name:

Who cannot be moved by a summer sunset, or the balmy breeze of a warm summer evening when the sunshine of the day gives way to a clear moonlight sk. Yet, how may of us brings to mind that we are viewing the handiwork of God and stand in awe of not only his creative art but his gracious gift of forgiveness.

In our reading we see that Jeremiah is relaying that God wills that our hearts will be changed, that we will see that the Lord who makes the sun shine is the one who can also change our hearts. 

A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign, which said: "I am blind, please help." There were only a few coins in the hat. A man was walking by. He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat. He then took the sign, turned it around, and wrote some words. He put the sign back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up. A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy. That afternoon the man who had changed the sign came to see how things were. The boy recognised his footsteps and asked, "Were you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?" The man said, "I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way." I wrote, "Today is a beautiful day but I cannot see it." Both signs told people that the boy was blind. But the first sign simply said the boy was blind. The second sign told people that they were so lucky that they were not blind.

Lord Jesus,
I ask you to open my eyes
as you did with the blind man,
so that I may really see.
Tune my ears
as you did with the man who was deaf and dumb,
so that I may really hear
what you are saying to me.
May the many experiences of my senses
remind me all that is around me.
May all that I experience
lead me closer to you.