There are certain sights that immediately announce that summer has truly arrived.
The smell of fresh-cut grass.
The sound of children arguing over whose turn it is to hold the garden hose.
A neighbour standing in the driveway wearing sandals with socks while explaining why this is actually “quite practical.”
And, of course, the backyard clothesline.
Now I realize that not everyone still hangs laundry outdoors. Some neighbourhoods have quietly retired the clothesline in favour of dryers that hum faithfully away in the basement. But every now and then I drive past a yard where bedsheets are dancing in the breeze like enormous white sails, towels are flapping enthusiastically, and somebody’s plaid boxer shorts are evangelizing the entire subdivision.
There is something wonderfully hopeful about a clothesline.
A washing machine is an act of necessity.
A clothesline is an act of optimism.
You are placing your complete confidence in sunshine, wind, and the continued absence of unexpected thunderstorms.
As a priest, I have often reflected that faith occasionally looks remarkably similar.
Most of us would much prefer God’s industrial-sized heavenly dryer. We would like our problems solved in forty-five minutes on “Permanent Press.” Instead, God frequently seems to hand us a clothesline.
“Let’s hang this out for a while.”
“Will it take long?”
“It depends on the wind.”
That is not always the answer we were hoping for.
The clothesline also possesses an uncanny ability to humble us.
No matter how dignified you believe yourself to be, eventually you will find yourself chasing a pillowcase that has escaped its clothespin and is making a determined sprint toward the neighbour’s vegetable garden.
There are few spiritual disciplines quite as effective as pursuing your own fitted sheet across the lawn while trying to appear composed.
Stephen Leacock would probably have observed that nothing reminds a person of human limitations faster than wrestling a king-sized bedsheet during a lively August breeze. The bedsheet almost always wins.
Yet there is joy hidden in all of this.
Those towels drying in the sunshine somehow smell different from anything that ever emerges from a dryer. Scientists can probably explain it. I prefer to believe that sunshine leaves fingerprints.
The Scriptures often remind us that God meets us in wind and breath. The Hebrew word ruach means both wind and Spirit. Perhaps that is why there is something almost sacramental about watching clean laundry sway gently beneath a blue July sky. Ordinary things become reminders that invisible gifts are often doing their quiet work all around us.
Most of God’s finest work is like that.
We cannot see grace.
We simply notice its effects.
Patience slowly growing.
Forgiveness becoming easier.
Hope returning after it had quietly wandered off.
Kindness appearing in conversations where it had previously been absent.
The Spirit moves rather like the summer breeze. We cannot command it, bottle it, or predict exactly when it will arrive. But when it does, everything hanging in our lives begins to move.
Perhaps that is one of the hidden invitations of Ordinary Time.
We spend so much of life trying to hurry every process along. Yet fruit ripens slowly. Friendships deepen slowly. Healing comes slowly. Wisdom almost stubbornly refuses to be microwaved.
Even laundry takes its own sweet time.
So this weekend, if you happen to pass a backyard clothesline, don’t dismiss it as merely another household chore.
See instead a small sermon fluttering in the breeze.
A reminder that not everything needs to be rushed.
That fresh air still has work to do.
That sunshine remains one of God’s oldest collaborators.
And that sometimes the holiest thing we can do is simply pin our ordinary lives out into the care of God… and trust the wind.
After all, the Kingdom of Heaven has probably been quietly flapping on backyard clotheslines for generations.
We just haven’t always noticed.
Follow along on Instagram @renewablespiritual.
Companion Prayer
Loving God,
Thank you for the simple joys of summer—the warmth of the sun, the gentle breeze, and the ordinary moments that quietly fill our hearts with gratitude.
When I am tempted to rush through life, teach me to trust your patient work within me. Like laundry drying in the open air, help me to rest in your care, knowing that your Spirit is always at work, even when I cannot see it.
May I notice your grace in the smallest moments today, and may my life be refreshed by the wind of your love.
In the name of Christ, who makes all things new.
Amen.