To Vacation or Not To Vacation: The Battle Within

⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work, ¹⁰ but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. ¹¹ For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.  Exodus 20:9-11

In case you didn't notice or miss my blogs, there has been a reason why I hadn't blogged at all.   Part of it was simply because it took me sometime to figure out how to get Internet access in Mexico without paying an arm and a leg to have it.   Oh, I'm sorry....I forgot to actually mention that the reason why I was in Mexico was because my wife and I had been graciously blessed to be able to take a week long ( 7 whole days) getaway to a beautiful resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.   This was the first time we had been on this long of a VACATION , out of the country, without any real agenda and no kids.

I must tell you the resort was absolutely beautiful, the beach and the landscape sculpted by GOD alone was incredible, and the people and food were amazing.   But my wife and I noticed something after about 5 days....we were missing what we had been vacationing from.  Now this raises a question....."What were we actually vacationing from?"  Now that I have about 10 days since my last post, I've had a lot of time to think about this.   The truth is....I didn't need 7 days to disconnect from work, from the adventure of counseling folks, worshipping with my small body of believers at Connections, working alongside my co-workers at SSM and hearing about their lives (and drama), seeing my neighbors and fraternizing with their families, dealing with my failing car, and etc.......... WHY? I know some of you are saying...PICK ME...I need a break from it all....... hold up before you check your passports to make sure you can go.

I discovered the reason why I've done well with being away on a Mission trip for 13 days, going to the Lake house for 3 days with couples for marriage enrichment, or Chicago for 4 days with my bride to Celebrate our Marriage, or Wisconsin for 4 days with my lovely kiddos....and the simple answer to that is because I didn't break my rhythm of life and in all of those venues I found myself serving...which is what I am, which what we ARE ALL CREATED TO DO.   See the reason GOD doesn't take vacation, isn't because He doesn't need to.   The reason why in Jesus 33 years of living and 3 of them were CRITICAL MINISTRY YEARS you NEVER READ of HIM taking a vacation is because of today's scripture......I believe He took the Sabbath seriously.  Whereas we don't so much.   This is precisely why many of US feel like we work 7 days a week...and then this justifies internally our perception that we NEED TO GET AWAY FROM IT ALL.  This is my thought, my theory, my perspective....but if we took the Sabbath seriously, where we didn't do any work, where we meditated, worshipped, cleared our minds and really rested......a vacation wouldn't be as NECESSARY as we've made them.  I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't go on them.....but they wouldn't BE AS IMPORTANT as we've made them because of our own disobedience to obey the SABBATH DAY. 

Okay, so where am I going......I'll try to wrap up.   I'll give you the weekend update on this past Sunday's message in two chunks (Thursday/Friday on Solid Love).   But hey folks...before you book that trip, spend money you don't have, become too frustrated with not having ME TIME, pull all your hair out because you have lost control of your life.........ask yourself this....Do I take the Sabbath seriously, and if I haven't is that why EVERYTHING IS and HAS been off?  I will vacation again....but you better believe I will keep myself serving others beit in Cabo, Chicago, or during staycationing....because that's who I am.  But in the meantime.....I plan on keeping and honoring the Sabbath (my day to rest & recharge) because GOD BLESSED it and asked me to keep it Holy.