During this hot summer month, I’ll be featuring two ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐books highlighting nature.
To reference Nat King Cole, these “lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer” often take me back to the simpler days of my childhood. Sometimes strong summer storms would drive us neighborhood kids inside our garages to play Monopoly. On other days we would sprawl on fields of clover and bask in the wonder around us.
Those strong summer storms remind me of Betty Boswell’s Lucy and Thunder (©2023 by Mt Zion Ridge Press). This book addresses a common fear experienced by children as well as adults. A cute critter named Lucy has always been afraid of thunder. If she hears a storm, she hides in a cave or behind a family member or under a bed.
Like Lucy, our family dog and my sister and I often retreated to our basement to ride out the storms and stifle the sound of thunder. Eventually, my father would give us an “all clear” message that the storm had passed.
In Boswell’s book Lucy remains fearful until thunder threatens to scare her friend. When she turns her focus away from herself, Lucy learns to be brave and to pray and to sing praise songs. Soon she forgets her fears. I need to be more like Lucy and turn my focus away from myself!
“Jesus replied, ‘You of little faith, why are you so afraid?’ Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm.”—Matthew 8:26
Joanna Gaines’ picture book The Wonder You See (©2025 by Tommy Nelson) also reminds me of my childhood.
Many of my hot July days called for reading in treehouses or daydreaming in clover fields. We made mud pies and jumped puddles and flew June bugs on a string and played Annie Over.
We learned from nature and saw wonder in the butterflies and grasshoppers and ants. Those busy ants carrying their cargo across the carport taught me the value of perseverance! (I hope my former students still remember the short story “Leiningen Vs. the Ants.”)
“Look at an ant. Watch it closely; let it teach you a thing or two.”—Proverbs 6:6-8
Unlike today, I believe those “lazy, crazy, hazy” days of yore provided us with the opportunity to expand our minds.
Joanna Gaines helps readers to bring back those days of finding the wonder God has created. She also encourages us to take our focus outward and upward and away from ourselves and those tech devices that stymie our senses.
I pray your month of July can be filled with flagging down ice cream trucks, catching fireflies in a jar, playing hide and seek, hitting croquet mallets, searching for the Big Dipper, and reading lots of wonderful books.
May you stay sheltered in the times of storms, and may you always see the wonder of God’s world.
“Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field be joyful, and all that is in it! Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord, for he comes, for he comes to judge the earth.”—Psalm 96:11-13
“Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.”—Robert Louis Stevenson
“I get my best ideas in a thunderstorm. I have the power and majesty of nature on my side.”—Ralph Steadman
“Wisdom begins in wonder.”—Socrates
“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”—G. K. Chesterton
Luke 5:26; Romans 15:13; Psalm 61:2; Isaiah 43:2
