In the midst of heat and drought,
sometimes we feel the pull of doubt,
wonder whether it is the weather
that makes us seem so sapped
or if maybe it is something else…

Maybe something other than summer,
some reason stronger than season,
something deeper than long hours of sun
running into the mid-afternoons
of June and July and oh-I-think-I’m-going-to-die-August.

Thoughts like these make us believe
we ought to consider carefully
choice and consequence,
hoping these are not the sort of decisions
that end in repentance.

And yet sometimes
as clearly as the leading line
of a blue-black storm cloud,
we know that the very thing
that we dare not say out loud

is exactly the choice
that has been calling our name
for months or even for years,
and we have often used “wisdom”
as euphemism for “fear.”

So… is it really all that hard
to know what we truly want to do?
Or just too much of a stretch
to believe God would actually want to bless
the deeper desires of our own true heart

and that he really has called us to peace
not strife?

H. Arnett
7/2/18