By Dr. James L. Snyder
When I was young, back in “the day,” a minute had 60 seconds. An hour had 60 minutes. A day has 24 hours. Oh, for those good old days.
I am not exactly sure how many seconds a minute has or how many minutes an hour has because he goes by so fast I cannot keep track.
I know that a week does not have seven days anymore.
Years ago, the Beatles had a song called “Eight Days a Week.” Nowadays it is more like three days a week: yesterday, today and tomorrow!
Today is tomorrow’s yesterday and I am not exactly sure how to keep up anymore. By the time I get to tomorrow, I forgot what I was supposed to do today. Then, when I get to today, I cannot remember what I did yesterday.
The thing I like to do the most, goes by so quickly and that which I hate doing drags on for centuries. Which has me thinking maybe I should not voice what I like or do not like?
One thing I like about summer, when I can catch my breath and enjoy it, is the fact that it is made up of those lazy, hazy days I enjoy so much. Not having a schedule, not having a deadline, not having someone telling me what I should or should not do. Ah, those crazy, lazy days of summer.
The difference between summer and winter is that during the summer, you can get away with doing nothing but in the wintertime, there is nothing you can get away with.
During the summer my wife will ask me if I have done such and such and I respond by saying, “It’s summer, I’ll get to it. I got plenty of time.”
During the winter, my wife will remind me of all the things I was supposed to do during the summer and that now I have to do because winter is a coming.
Summer is hazy and lazy, while winter is “Hurry up and get it done.”
More is expected from a person during the winter months that during the summer. I object very strenuously to this kind of attitude. Of course, this attitude comes from the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage. She has the idea that winter, or at least the beginning of winter, is the time to clean up everything. By everything, she is including the garage.
Now that summer is over and the lawn does not need to be mowed anymore, I can, according to her logic, transpose that energy into cleaning up things. Then she will confront me with a favorite saying of hers, “Cleanliness is next to godliness.”
One of these days, when I get up the courage, I am going to ask her to show me where that verse is in the Bible. I kind of think a person can be too clean, like squeaky clean. You know how squeaky gets on people’s nerves, especially mine.
My favorite saying is, “Laziness is next to everything.”
Perhaps that is why I like summer so much. There are shades of laziness that can only be exploited in the good old summertime.
Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, understood this concept very well. He says, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven,” (Ecclesiastes 3:1 KJV).
Time goes by so quickly that a person hardly has enough time to really appreciate the time that they have
