Good To Be Back...

I just concluded the best vacation I have ever taken. No kidding! The reason is that on day one of a twenty day break, I sincerely asked the Lord to teach me how to rest. For me, vacation always seemed to be just another form of intense activity. There is a new phenomenon that this struggling economy has produced over the past few years called staycationing. It simply means that record numbers of Americans are staying very close to home while on vacation. That’s what Annie and I did. We traveled very little and invested our time enjoying relationships with the people we love and simply…resting. This picture is just some of Annie’s huge, wild, wonderful, crazy fun and deeply loving Sicilian family. They have been an amazing addition to my life over the past 37 years and spending a weekend with them was a blast. Knowing we would have several quiet days, I really wanted to learn more about the value and power of rest and marry it to my belief that every second is important and we NEED to be dramatically engaged with the people around us. So---how do rest and work compliment each other? The thing that struck me the most was:

Rest is just as holy as service: The seventh day of creation was as powerful and impacting as the previous six. God deemed the day blessed and holy because He ceased His creative activity to reflect on what He had made. This wasn’t a response to fatigue; it was an act of enjoyment, review and celebration. He examined the fruit of His labor and found it to be very good. We live in a state of unprecedented business which smothers our need and responsibility to stop the bus and really embrace all the stuff that is our life. I think learning when and how to rest is manditory otherwise we buy into the notion that God is only drawn to those living on the brink of exhaustion.

I spent a portion of each staycation day thanking God for the people in my life, for all the stuff that makes sense and the stuff that doesn’t, things I appreciate & things I don’t and especially.....for my friendship with Him.