Right now I'm waking up in Boston, visiting east coast cities with Katie and a friend from London England.
If you ask an American what we're doing, they would say a vacation. However, if you were to ask the same of someone from most of the rest of the world, including my friend from London, they would say what we're doing is a holiday.
I like that answer much better. Holiday appears to me to be a variation of the words "holy" and "day". "Holy" meaning set apart, altogether different, sacred. Vacation is a variation of vacate, get away from, etc.
The implications of the word vacation doesn't include any responsibilities or opportunities to make something of the days, but merely freedom from normal life.
Holiday, however, implies a freedom from the daily grind of work and weekly schedules, but also a freedom to make the days holy and set apart.
I think this applies to our daily lives as well. As we grow in freedom and in who we've been created to be. As we become free, by the grace of God, from expectations of others and the trappings of the broken parts of the world around its, we then have a freedom to do the things we have in our hearts to do. Then we're not serving and loving others from a place of guilt or performance. We realize that we don't have to, but rather we get to serve others and be served by them. That is an intense and humbling gift to be intentionally used by God in this way, not because we deserve it, but because God loves us and he loves the people he places in our path.
In the midst of some realizations happening in my own holiday, I would encourage you to set apart a moment this week to remember the gifts you have been given, including those opportunities to create and to serve.
-Michael
How do you spend for vacation time? How does that mindset also affect your day-to-day life?
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