Vacation!

It’s Fall Break where I live. It sure seems a lot of people took off to go somewhere. I am a bit envious ( in a God-honoring way, of course).

Why is that we want to get away, to go somewhere, anywhere but here? As soon as an opportunity presents itself, vroom vroom, we are gone! Out of here! G.O.N.E.

Since I’m stuck here, wishing I was somewhere else, I’ve been thinking about this. Is our desire to vacate tied to the way we live? Probably. Alabama captured it pretty well:

I'm in a hurry to get things done
Oh I rush and rush until life's no fun
All I really gotta do is live and die
But I’m in a hurry and don’t know why

We proudly embrace a self-validating "busyness" and take so little time to experience reflective rest. That’s the way it seems to me anyway.

Jesus knew about busyness at a level beyond our imagination. He even tried to control the crowds, it seems, by telling people he healed to not tell others.

Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. (Luke 5:15)

Can you imagine the crowds? Jesus was compassionate and loving dealt with them. I don’t think he took vacations, so how could he do it? Maybe this is the key:

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. (Luke 5:16)

Key words: Often, Withdrew, Lonely Places, Prayed.

I need to work on this. Maybe a vacation would help? Oops, there I go again.