Welcome summer today, June 20, 2016. The heat is on! In honor of the year’s longest day and higher temperatures, the “Summer” devotion excerpt from God’s Word for Gardeners Bible is shared below, from the Garden Stories series on Seasons. Hopefully your weather hasn’t hit the heat of a furnace, but ours feels close!
So these men, wearing their robes, trousers, turbans and other clothes, were bound and thrown into the blazing furnace.
Daniel 3:21 NIV
Read: Daniel 3:10 – 29
Thicken the Plot: Isaiah 43:1 – 3; 2 Timothy 3:10 – 11; Revelation 14:12
Perhaps it’s a bit dramatic to compare a heat wave in summer to the experience of Daniel’s friends, thrown into the fiery furnace. But week after week of one-hundred degree days can seem like a furnace. The temperate days of spring and autumn bring rains to the promised land, and we too are refreshed at the equinoxes by decent temperatures. Yet the summer solstice sends us traveling to bearable places, not to the garden. But enough complaining. We don’t see Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego whining or worried as they endured their torture, steadfast and loyal to God and his ways; certain that God would deliver, and accepting if he chose not to (Daniel 3:17 – 18). These men never doubted God’s ability, even as the flames grew hotter. They never stopped trusting him, having patience to endure even this near-hopeless circumstance (2 Timothy 3:10 – 11).
Basil is such a plant in the summer garden, enduring the heat gracefully, growing steadfastly. Faithful and fragrant through season’s end of what seems like eternally hot days, basil rises tall and bushy, filling out with luxuriant green leaves… Basils are primarily annuals that glory in hot weather . . . Basils put out in the garden before the weather is really warm will just sit there and suffer.
— Rosalind Creasy, The Edible Herb Garden, 1999
Though the plant dilly-dallies along in spring, it steps up to the arriving heat, unharmed by the scorching afternoon sun, remaining fresh and unwithered though the heat presses on (Jeremiah 17:8). A mere brush with its pungent leaves makes us want to linger, despite the sweat beads quickly forming, and tend and keep this endearing plant. Beautiful basil, you stand sentinel in our gardens, testifying to the patient endurance God wants to yield in us (Revelation 14:12). We need to be ready for what is coming next, in our daily routine or in eternity.
Prayer: Father, your miraculous provision preserved Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the fiery furnace. May I be as trusting as they when life’s circumstances threaten to burn through my resolve. May I turn to you in trust, standing strong under the heat of difficulty, trusting only in your care and provision.
This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.
Revelation 14:12 NIV
For more devotions on the Seasons, turn to page a-42 in God’s Word for Gardeners Bible
Photo Credits:
© 2016 Shelley S. Cramm Summer devotions from God’s Word for Gardeners Bible with basil leaves and flowers. Basil grows best in the heat of summer, a sentinel to the patient endurance of the saints.
