There are several names for this time of year like “the lazy hazy days of summer” and the “dog days” of summer.  I can understand the lazy and the hazy, but I’ve never quite followed the dog days; what do dogs have to do with it?

My best guess is that it’s another way of saying the lazy thing, but I’m not sure.

Whatever you like to call it, it’s August, and in the Northern Hemisphere it’s summer, and this year has been fairly hot around where I live.

August has its own feel, don’t you think?  It really does feel a little lazy; it’s a great time for a long lazy cookout on a Sunday afternoon; there just isn’t much “Hustle and bustle” to the season… you can almost just relax and hope the next hurricane stays out to sea.

There are times for just about everything in life; even the Bible says so:

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under heaven:

Ecclesiastes 3:1; full context 3:1-8

This is the beginning of a huge sentence that goes on for 8 whole verses, and it pretty much tells us that everything has its own time.  So, maybe God made August for us to slow down just a bit, to spend time with loved ones, to do a little gardening and sit outside in the evening and listen to the symphony of the cicadas.  Maybe God thought that we run ourselves ragged too much, maybe He thought that we need to get re-focused on what things are really important.  Maybe He thought August would be a good time to start paying attention to the pennant races…  (OK, I just added that one)

The season will change soon, the kids will go back to school and the boss will come back from vacation; isn’t this a great time to “smell the roses” as they like to say?