The Summer Paradox

Written in 2025 by Mitch Miller for our Summer Saltbox Quarterly.

There’s something strange about the way we experience time in summer.

First, we spend a lot of time looking forward to it. If we start looking forward to it in mid-winter, we end up anticipating summer for about as long as the season itself actually lasts. So there's a lot of build up. 

Then summer finally arrives—and along with it comes pressure. Pressure to make plans, to make memories, and to not let this precious season go to waste. There's a sense of hurry. 

After the initial rush wears off, and we nearly faint getting into our volcanically hot cars, we start muttering, “I can’t wait for fall.”

But in July, when stores begin running “Back to School” sales, we mutter the opposite: "Where has summer gone? I'm not ready for fall!"

In the span of a few short weeks, we go from longing for summer to mourning its loss. It’s dizzying.

Why do we feel this way?

It comes down to how we view summer. For many of us, it's “time off.” It's time for us. Time for our leisure, our vacations, and our ease. Thus, we tend to approach summer more selfishly than we do other seasons.

We enter summer with a tight grip on our time, hoping to shape it to our dreams and plans. And the more we aim to control time, the faster it seems to slip through our fingers and we end up feeling duped!

Thankfully, Scripture offers a solution. In Ephesians 5:16, Paul urges us to “redeem the time” rather than controlling it. 

This starts by changing our perspective on seasons like summer. 

Maybe summer is not a time to follow our dreams, but a time to follow Jesus in a unique way - one that is distinct from the rest of the year.  Maybe the extra free time isn't only for recreation, but for reaching out. 

The next step is changing our actions. To redeem our time, we must give it away. 

That might sound backwards—but following Jesus almost always requires doing the opposite of what comes naturally. Jesus taught us to serve our way to greatness, to head to the back of the line to be first, and to lose our lives (time) in order to find it. And as strange as Jesus' teachings can sound, they work.

Anyone who has truly surrendered their summers to God and others knows this paradox: the more freely you give your time away, the more rich your time becomes. And that’s exactly what we see people discover, and re-discover, every summer on the West Side.

The ministries and non-profits on the West Side ramp up their output each summer. They don't do less, but more - pouring into their community and connecting with their neighbors.  

We've counted over a dozen extra outreaches happening on the West Side this summer (Like Textile Heritage Park hosting chapel services every other Monday evening under the pavilion) just off the top of our heads. 

Additionally, every summer, believers from across Greenville jump-in to serve us here in the Mill Crescent. 

For example, this summer at Griggs, we hosted four weeks of “Camp Griggs,” our summer day camp for kids in Poe Mill. Each week, high-school students from Grace Church came on mission trips to help lead the camps. 

Fellowship Greenville also sent two teams into our neighborhood, taking on service projects and even distributing our quarterly community newspaper—Saltbox Quarterly—to people like you!

Within our own church, the spirit of service soars in the summer. Seven Griggs members traveled internationally for mission work this Summer. We also hosted eight church-wide dinners after our Wednesday night services, where eight different men from the church stepped up to preach a mid-week service. 

You’d think all this activity would make summer feel even busier, like it flew by even faster. But strangely, the opposite is true. When we redeem the time, it seems to stretch out. Time passes in a full and meaningful way. We're at peace with how the summer came and went.

This is part of the gospel. Because Jesus died and rose again, our sin is forgiven and our lives are eternal. In Christ, there’s one sense in which time is no longer such a scarce commodity. We'll have plenty of it in heaven.

We no longer have to have every experience here, because we will have every experience there. We no longer have to manage time to perfection, because perfection will come in due time. We no longer have to "live it up while we can," because we have forever to live.

This frees us up from the selfishness that steals our time, and invites us to a selflessness that cannot be hurried or filled with regret.  

So try it. Treat summer like “Time on.” Time for God, time for others, time for outreach.

Strangely, your summer experience might not feel so strange.