Title Legend of Summer
Legend of Summer
Text/ Psalm 1:3, Mark 4:26-29
Our country is truly a blessed country. Because it is a country with very distinct four seasons: spring-summer-autumn-winter. I am truly grateful to God for giving me spring-summer-autumn-winter. Spring as spring, summer as summer, fall as fall, and winter as winter, how beautiful and wonderful are they? Today, I would like to share grace while meditating on “Legend of summer.” First, let's read today's text.
*He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither, and all its events prosper. (Psalm 1:3) A seed sprouts and grows, and you do not know how it came to be. The earth bears its own fruit, first a bud, then a head, then a grain that is faithful to the ear. Mark 4:26-29)
2. Webster's Dictionary of Summer
When I looked up the <summer-summer> entry in Webster's dictionary, it said that summer had no special meaning and was just the season from June to August between spring and autumn. It is worth noting, however, that summer is defined as "a period of maturing powers".
When we think of “summer,” the images that come to our mind are the blazing sun, heat, sweltering, muggy discomfort, fatigue from sleeping at night in a subtropical climate, natural disasters (drought, typhoon, flood, tsunami, etc.) ), dark green mountains, wavy seas, vacations (domestic and overseas tourism-climbing-pilgrimage-fishing-golf...), fatigue, boredom, work inefficiency, mountain blessing crusade, summer retreat, mosquitoes, bugs, and so on.
Summer is not a season when people can be active. Summer is a season when people have to passively adapt. Webster's dictionary definition of summer as "a period of maturing powers (note that power is plural, not singular)" is thought to be a God-centered definition, not a man-centered definition. . Because people are incompetent = exhausted = inefficiency = inefficiency = irritable = tired before the power of summer. But nevertheless, after a midsummer, a person can feel for himself that the body and mind have matured. This maturity is not the maturity achieved by the active power of man, but the spiritual powers (word + prayer + praise + church + the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, etc.) and physical powers (sun, wind, drought, rain, typhoon, mountain, sea, etc.) because
3. Legend of Summer
first. Summer is God's season. I lived in Wonsam-myeon, Yongin-gun for 3 years before, and here in Seojong-myeon, Yangpyeong-gun for 3 years, and watched closely, it seems that the farmers work only at one time in the spring and hardly do anything in the summer. In the case of the rice fields in front of and below our church that I see and pass by every day, I have not seen anyone working in the rice fields from June to October 20 after planting rice with a tractor in May and putting in the paddy loch. No pesticides are applied to the rice fields here in Seojong-myeon. By the way, the rice in this paddy field is now ripe yellow and ready for harvest. During the summer, the farmer did almost nothing.
In the meantime, the heat of the sun, wind, rain, drought, and typhoons came and went. And the rice is ripe. The seeds sprouted and grew while the farmer slept and woke up day and night in the middle of summer. Today's text is exactly what Mark 4:26-29 says.
second. Summer is the season of 修道 (capital = wiping the province) = 退修 (removing = retreating for a while and wiping the road). I said earlier that summer is not the season of man, but the season of God. God gave man a summer to give him everything and rest for a while. Jesus said to his disciples who had returned from a missionary journey, “Come by yourselves to a secluded place and rest for a while (Mark 6:31). It means to rest when you are resting and work when you are working.
But there is one thing we believers should keep in mind here. This is the correct understanding of rest. People around the world relax = play = relieving stress by having fun at famous tourist destinations. But there must be a plus alpha here for the rest of believers. Word + Prayer + Praise + Meditation + Silence Practice + Being Alone, etc. (Reference: Spring of the Word No. 16 Jesus’ Vacation Law, No. 69 Exodus, Wilderness and Glory, No. 478 You should rest separately in a secluded place) .
third. Summer is a great season. In today's text, it is said that a blessed person is like a tree planted by a stream (Psalm 1:3), and the seed sowed by a farmer grows by itself without even the farmer's knowledge (Mark 4:27). There is a great secret hidden in these two words. What is the secret? Both the subjects (the seed sown by the blessed man and the farmer) in both texts did not take root in the stream by their own active ability, nor did the seed grow by human power, but were thoroughly passively sown by the stream and grew by the power of God. is true. In other words, it is talking about the awakening of God's amazing power and man's utter incompetence. Like this, summer is a great season to awaken the incompetence of man and the power of God.
Therefore, the Bible tells us to cast your deeds (Proverbs 16:3), your ways (Psalm 37:5-6), your burdens (Psalm 55:22), and your anxieties (1 Peter 5:7) on the Lord.