The End Of Vacations

There is dissonance in coming home. You have had a hundred adventures in one week. Everybody back home has been doing the same thing they always do day in and day out. People will ask about your vacation. When you begin to tell them that you saw God working or that you saw His power in Creation; a rock slide 100 feet at 500 Cubic Feet Per Second, you get a blank stare. How do you explain that this one week instead of watching television you had reserved seats for the Perseid Meteor shower?


A missionary friend related how a husband had gone to the mission field for a short-term work while his wife stayed at home. When he got home he was exuberant with emotion about experiences he’d had. To her it felt as if he’d had an affair.  Coming home feels like that.

The vacations end but the adventure continues. Whereas it’s great to see God in creation it’s deeper and more real to see Him work through difficulties in the workplace, sickness in souls or struggles with finances. Therein we get glimpses of Jesus’ heart and of those that pursue that same Spirit. These are the places where, as they say, the rubber meets the road.

So we escape the grind of life, the cell phones, the screens and screams to experience God leading beside the still waters. We soak Him in, we find Sabbath rest and allow ourselves to ‘Be still and know’ He is God. If we escaped enough we draw on the week we had while the world was living normal. From that place we are able to engage our culture and encourage them to seek, to know, to “Be still and know.”