Memorial Day and Labor Day are bookend weekends for summertime. Looking back, most years I’ve tackled some form of home improvement chores on these two holidays—big or little things for the season.

This Memorial Day we put in our summer garden. It started with digging up thistles that came back after we thought we’d pulled them last year. Then we prepped the soil and went off to our favorite nurseries. Six different tomatoes, leeks, tomatillo, lettuce, spinach, dill, cucumber, cilantro (two varieties), parsley, basil (three varieties), oregano, thyme, lemon verbena, rosemary, chives and tarragon. We also added five more lavender plants--all to encourage Lorraine's dream of a backyard herb business. It sounds like a bounty, but after a season of bunnies, deer, tornadic winds and whatever else comes our way, we’ll see.

Now that Cream of Wheaton and Summerfest have passed, what are we to do?

Yahoo Tech and Popular Science suggest that life would be simpler and more secure with a second cellphone number, a more private one.

Forbes magazine suggests a $900 32-inch device with $100 wood frame add-on to bring order to home and family life.

House Beautiful recently published an article “The 74 Best Living Room Paint Color Ideas to Complement Any Design Aesthetic.” For house-painting enthusiasts, this is surely helpful—reducing colors choices from thousands down to a simple 74. Only 74?

I appreciate the theological undertone of Benjamin Moore’s color, “Providence Blue,” but 74 is way more colors than rooms/walls in my house.

Apartment Therapy reports “IKEA’s Mid-Century Modern Lamp is Giving Champagne Taste on a Beer Budget.” But not only a lamp. The article goes on to describe a new rug, linen curtains, an accent chair and a couch. It all matches in a vibe of Scandinavian modernism.

Adding new tech or changing up the color on a wall or getting a new lamp can help us to feel refreshed or improved in some way.

But there’s another way to look at home. It’s not about how it connects to your tech or looks mid-century modern or whatever style you like or even a harvest basketful of homegrown, perfectly ripened food from your backyard to your table. It’s more about what happens in your home than how it looks, maybe not even in your home, but in some other part of you.

I’m thinking about the part of you that you may not know yourself, or maybe only about halfway. What about the part of you that you’d just as soon forget?Like the place in your house that needs attention, but you just put it off or let it go. It’s a place you don’t show others so it’s not so bad. Or maybe it’s something you pay others to take care of because of your own lack of skill or time or interest.

The thing of it is, you may not know yourself as well as you think—but God knows every part. He wants to show it all to you—to give you a glimpse of what he saves you from and to discover what he set inside you to give him honor and glory in a way that no one else can.

But he doesn’t want to leave us there. The answer is not inside us, but outside.

What if Jesus is calling you to something new this season? Not in your house, but in your soul. This summer mean a new season of prayer. A time when you discover a new way to serve. Perhaps Jesus will show you something new to do with your riches. What if you are to meet a new person or to help someone become a new person? What about reading a book of the Bible as if for the first time? The hobby you’ve let slip could open a door. The neighbor you’ve never spoken to might surprise you. Things you don’t know but always wondered about. An estranged friend or relative.

Sometimes God brings hard things from which there is no escape. Even in times like those, we can take heart because of the nearness of Jesus in time and space, the presence of the Holy Spirit right now, and the power of God’s Word to shed light and hope in every situation.

Listen to him. Do what he says.

Wonderful things ahead.

In Luke 5, Jesus said to Peter, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.”