The Grand Delusion

Hello Emmanuel,

You shouldn't be more tired after vacation than before. That is the opposite of how it is suppose to work. The purpose of vacation is to vacate. It is to go away; to vacate the daily grind of your regular activities in order to.... to.... to what?

I know a few people who never take vacation. My grandpa was one of them. I personally think there is something mentally wrong with them. But perhaps there isn't. Maybe there is a sort of logic behind their madness. Maybe... just maybe... vacation is a delusion. Or maybe vacation serves a different purpose than what I'm thinking it should serve. I always thought it was suppose to revitalize you; to re-energize you; to give you that 'umph' to continue on the daily girnd. I'm considering that I may be mistaken.

I wonder if vacation serves no other purpose than to save us from the daily repetition that lulls us to sleep and eventually into boredom. I'm not referring to the kind of boredom of doing nothing. I'm referring to the kind of boredom that results from doing the same things every week, no matter how busy we are; to repeat ourselves so often that we could live our lives while being half asleep. Can we get to the point when we sleep-walk through life because we always seem to know what to expect every Monday morning when we start yet another predictable week?

This brings me to the Church and your faith in Christ. God doesn't want you to be bored. God certainly doesn't want you to be lulled to sleep with weekly repetition. Does He? A journey of discipleship is wrought with unpredictable twists and turns. No way would I ever have thought I'd be on the east side of Cincinnati typing a weekly article at a gas station. Yet, here I am. I never thought I'd be enjoying the complexities of helping married people sort through their difficulties. Yet, I do. I never thought that I'd be a public speaker, an administrator, a mentor and certainly not a father of 5. Yet, here I am.

And yet I went on vacation. Why?

I think the anwer is this: no matter what we do, repetition lulls us to unawareness which brings boredom. It is the same for our faith. To do church the same all the time lulls us to the unawareness of God. We get bored with the 'sameness' that we think we know what to expect. Unfortunately, we tend to see what we only expect. Churches that haven't changed since 1999, 1980 or--Lord forbid--1955 are congregations that, at some point, were lulled to sleep with repetition. They never took a vacation from their daily expectations to see how else the world was living.... or how other churches were living and why.

My challenge to you is to look in the mirror and see if you are being lulled to unawareness because of your repetition. Is God trying to speak to you in a way that you wouldn't expect? Are you aware enough to consider it, hear it, understand it? Are you open-minded enough to look for it? Or are you so enmeshed with your weekly slumber that you think you know what to expect?

If so, then maybe you need a vacation.

God is Good,
Pastor Joe