Last week before I felt the need to join the blogging support for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, I entered a dialogue with Brad Hightower about a biblical understanding of vacation. Brad wondered whether our culture’s high view of vacations didn’t really amount to a deep misunderstanding of the nature of our work. I understood that Brad argued that vacations have become a sort of idol that takes us away from our true spiritual calling and instead are another form of self-indulgence that leads to even less peace and more stress.
And in most ways that matter, I agree with him. I really do believe that the way people spend their leisure time says something about the state of their hearts. Observing what I “have” to do is not nearly as revealing as what I “choose” to do. And many people choose deeply destructive or at best wasteful amusements in their “free time.” Bill Cosby once did a comedy sketch about people who work all week only to get trashed on the weekend. When they are asked about it, their response is “I deserve it.”
But biblically, we have a different model woven into the creation accounts that is inextricable with our understanding of “sabbath”. Sabbath is not primarily about rest, it is about communion and reflection. When God “rests” in the first Sabbath (Genesis 2:1-3) it’s not because he is tired or needs to “get away from it all” (he just created a perfect place for a vacation!), but instead he simply stops working and enjoys what he has made. Indeed, one of my favorite images is from Genesis 3:8 when God is walking in the garden in the evening. (Can’t you just picture God strolling down a trail through the trees in flip-flops with a cold one in his hand?)
It is this understanding of Sabbath as communion that leads us to re-cast our leisure time from a “vacating” as Brad called it, to a time of recreation—re-creation. I want to encourage Christians to have far more restful, peaceful, relational, educational, experiential, and dare I say, spiritual vacations by re-connecting them to creation. I have become deeply aware of how truly stressed out and disconnected from the Earth, our own souls and each other we become through the hurly burly of every day life.
This is why I have been critical of media as escape, video games as leisure, and amusement parks or Las Vegas excursions as the sole focus of our vacation time. That is not to say that a day at Disneyland is somehow “unchristian.” (I actually like roller coasters a lot.) I just want to challenge Christian families to reconsider their next trip to a resort where they will sit by a pool with a waterslide and spend too much on umbrella drinks when they could be snorkeling in a reef, hiking to a waterfall or looking for wildlife in a national park. I have also challenged Christian families to use their vacation time for mission trips, cross-cultural excursions or opportunities to see and reflect on more of the world.
I really believe that the more we “recreate” by “re-connecting” with “creation” the more our worldviews and our souls will be centered on what truly restores.
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