Rest

Vacations have always been interesting things to me.  Having just returned from a short camping excursion in the Upper Peninsula and knowing that I will be taking a quick week-long trip to Georgia at the beginning of August has brought some of these thoughts back to the forefront of my mind.  Let me begin these thoughts by expressing the immense gratitude I have for this church and its willingness (frankly, sometimes its insistence) to allow me to have this kind of vacation time with my family.  Being able to get away for a short time is beneficial on a number of levels:  my family gets to have some uninterrupted time together (something that sometimes doesn’t happen often in ministry); we get to spend some time recharging our batteries – spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically; the church gets to hear from gifted men of God whose style is often different than mine; and my family and I get an opportunity to worship with brothers and sisters from different areas.

Deep down, though, I must confess that I have a troubled relationship with vacations.  Growing up, we rarely took any vacations, in large part because the cost associated with such a thing was far beyond what my grandparents could afford.  In those rare instances we did take a family vacation, years of saving were required (I remember one such instance was a trip to Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee; it was a great time, but having a hotel room, admission to the park, a few rounds of putt-putt golf for me, and a helicopter ride must have cost a tremendous amount of money, even in the 1980s).  More than this, though, I often think of how the family vacation as we know it is a rather recent invention in the history of humanity.  For me, this leads me to think about so many ministers in the faith who never took scheduled vacation time (for instance, I still haven’t found that passage in Paul’s letters where he talks about a two-week getaway in the mountains of Asia Minor or at a beachside resort in Crete).  As a result, I often end up feeling guilty about taking the time away and it can be a struggle for me to resist the urge to be working while on vacation.  On the other hand, I do very much enjoy these moments, especially with my family.  The rejuvenation and refreshment that comes with these times is healthy and necessary, even if you sometimes feel as though all the things you did while you were away necessitate you having a break to recover from your vacation!

Ultimately, I am coming to understand that taking time to rest is critical for our health on every level.  In His creation God provided a Sabbath for us, a day of rest from our labor each week.  I find it interesting that it didn’t take long for us to take a day of rest and create a number of rules around it that made it more work to keep (this fact preaches to me every time I grapple with the question of “time off”)!  Jesus corrected this way of thinking when He said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).  What’s more, God instituted other examples of rest for us:  land Sabbaths, ceremonial days of rest, feast days, and so forth.  Sometimes, we get the mistaken notion that if we just will work a little harder, work a little longer, and not take that time off, we’ll get more accomplished.  The reality is, when we fail to follow God’s prescription for taking time for rest, we begin to work slower, we are less sharp, and we are not as efficient for the Kingdom work God has prepared for us.  Just something to think about…