The Sunday Letter
We are in the thick of it now. Middle of July, middle of a Southern summer, and the heat has settled in the way it does down here, heavy and close and in no hurry to leave. You step outside in the morning and the air already has weight to it. By afternoon the whole world seems to slow down and hum.
And thank the Lord, are we grateful for air conditioning. I will not pretend otherwise. There is a particular kind of relief that comes from stepping out of that heat into a cool room, and it is one of the small mercies of modern life. I thank God for it about a dozen times a day this time of year.
But here is the thing I keep coming back to. The cool air is a gift, not a reason to stay put. It would be an easy trade to make, to pull the shades and wait out the season indoors until the first cool morning of fall. Easy, and a little bit sad. Because the world God gave us does not pause for July. It is out there right now, green and alive and going on without us if we let it.
This week we ran a piece I wrote about the two Beauforts, one on the coast of North Carolina and one on the coast of South Carolina. Close enough to share a name, far enough apart to be nothing alike. And as I wrote it, I found myself back in the memories those places gave me. Hot days, the kind where the shirt sticks to your back before nine in the morning. Waterfront streets with folks out walking anyway, some on vacation, some just giving themselves a lazy day of wandering. Ice cream melting faster than anybody could eat it. That easy Southern habit of striking up a conversation with a stranger on a bench because the heat has slowed everyone down enough to talk.
None of that happens from inside. You have to go out into it. You have to let the heat find you a little.
That is what I love about this part of the country. We are so blessed to have all of this within a day’s drive. Little towns that never got the memo to become something else. Coast and mountain and everything folded in between. Places to visit, to explore, to learn from, to just stand in for a minute and feel how old and how alive they are all at once. There is no place like the South. I have looked, and I have not found one.
So this is my letter to you this week, plain as I can make it. Enjoy the cool air. Then go outside anyway. Take the drive. Walk the street with the shirt sticking to your back. Say hello to the stranger on the bench. The heat is not the enemy of a good day down here. It is just the price of admission, and it has always been worth paying.
Until next Sunday,
Porch Light
A brief Sunday reflection from Blessed South
There are two towns down here that share a name. One Beaufort sits on the North Carolina coast, the other on the South Carolina Lowcountry, and if you are not paying attention when you set out, it is an easy thing to aim for one and end up in the other. Same name. Same sound, near enough. Two very different places at the end of the road.
I have thought about that this week, because life has a way of offering us roads like that. Two paths that look about the same from where we stand. Two ways that carry the same easy promise. And it is only later, sometimes much later, that we learn they were never headed to the same place at all.
“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” — Proverbs 14:12
The hard truth in that line is not that the wrong road looks wrong. It is that the wrong road often looks right. It feels good under our feet. Every mile of it seems fine, until we arrive somewhere we never meant to be.
Jesus put it plainer still. “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” — Matthew 7:13-14
The easy way is crowded for a reason. The narrow way asks more of us, and it costs more, and it is still the only one that leads home.
I do not say this to frighten anybody. I say it because I have taken the wrong road enough times to know the ache of arriving where I did not want to be. And I have learned that the God I know does not leave us to read the map alone. He knows the country. He knows the home we are trying to reach, and He is willing to lead every step if we will let Him.
So this week, as you set out on whatever road is yours, choose it with care. Do not trust a way just because it feels easy or because the crowd is on it. Ask the One who knows the end from the beginning, and then follow where He leads. The narrow way is harder, but it is the way home, and the light at the end of it is on for you.
And if this brought you something today, share it with someone who’d enjoy it too.