WHAT GETS LOST IN SUMMER, AND WHY IT MATTERS

By Arnie Cole

Two weeks of vacation rarely cost you a mere two weeks. They cost you the six weeks around them, the weeks that absorb everything vacation pushed aside.

You plan two weeks to rest, relax, and enjoy family, which is right and good. But those two weeks don’t simply vanish from the calendar, do they? They get absorbed by the weeks around them. The work that wasn’t done on vacation still has to be done, compressed into the time that’s left. If you have children, summer adds its own particular fullness: camps, schedules, the drop-offs and pickups that turn an ordinary Tuesday into something busier than a typical Tuesday in October ever is.

One of the quiet casualties, almost every year, is the daily rhythm of time in God’s Word. The container that used to hold that habit got smaller, and something had to give. By the time August arrives, many of us look up and realize it has been weeks since we opened our Bibles with any real consistency.

I want to spend a few minutes thinking with you about what to do with that realization. Specifically, I want to make a case for something that might sound almost too modest: the way back is not a new bestselling book or some type of advanced spiritual practice. It is a return to four simple movements that Scripture itself models for us, again and again, in the lives of people who drifted and were brought home. We call these movements Receive, Reflect, Respond, and Reveal. I want to spend real time on each one, because I think they deserve more than a definition.

RECEIVE

To receive Scripture is to let it arrive before you do anything else with it. This sounds passive, almost too simple to count as a discipline, but it is the hardest of the four for many of us. It requires us to quiet the noise of our surroundings and simply read Scripture, slowly and attentively. The psalmist wrote, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). A lamp does not require much from you. It only requires that you turn it on so it can shine. After a season of being pulled in a dozen directions, the discipline of simply receiving without rushing is itself an act of trust. It says: I believe this is alive, and I am willing to let it work on me.

REFLECT

Reflection is where Scripture stops being words on a page and starts becoming a conversation with the true and living God. It is the quiet practice of asking what a passage means and how it applies to the particular life you are living this week, this season, in this seat at this kitchen table. The psalmist again: “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11). Storing implies time. It implies returning to something more than once, turning it over, letting it settle into a place deeper into our hearts. In fact, although reflection sometimes happens in a single sitting, heartfelt reflection often happens across days, sometimes weeks. Think about: a verse you read on a Tuesday may surface again on a Thursday in a conversation with a friend or neighbor. That, too, is the Spirit’s work.

RESPOND

If reflection is internal, response is the step where faith becomes visible, even if only to you. James put it directly: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only” (James 1:22). Response does not require a grand gesture. After a season of full calendars and scattered mornings, the most powerful response is often the smallest one: a phone call you’ve been avoiding, an apology to a spouse, fifteen minutes of prayer and meditation instead of a podcast on the drive home, a deeper dive into Scripture during the evening hours. What makes response so important is that it closes the loop between what we believe and how we actually live. Without it, Scripture remains beautiful but inert.

REVEAL

The final movement is the one most easily skipped, because it requires another person. To reveal is to let what God has done in you become visible to someone else. Jesus said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father” (Matthew 5:16). Reveal means letting what God has given you find its way into someone else’s day. It might look like texting a verse to a friend who is struggling, bringing up at dinner something you read that morning, asking a grandchild what they think a passage means, sitting with a neighbor who is going through something hard, and knowing what to say because Scripture has been sitting with you first. The point is that we have received something worth passing on, and we must pay enough attention to notice when someone near us needs it.

Fall is coming with its own rhythms and its own fresh starts. You do not need to invent something new to prepare for the Fall. The four movements that have carried faithful believers for thousands of years are available to you tomorrow morning, in whatever quiet you can find. Open your Bible. Receive what is there. Let it settle. Respond to it, however small that response might be. And when it has done its work in you, let someone else see it.

That is enough to begin.