Come away and rest awhile

Vacation time is upon us again. Many people are making their getaways from the daily grind. They’re tired out by the daily routine. They’re looking for an escape from stress. Maybe for cooler temperatures. 

It’s good to take a vacation. I try to get away for a few weeks during the summer, usually with a priest with whom I worked for many years. But getting away is easier said than done. In these days of connectivity, our work follows us around. When someone emails me while I’m on vacation, they get an automatic reply that I am out of the office. But I’m pretty sure that most people know that I’m nonetheless checking emails, text messages and phone calls. Sometimes, when vacation is over, I’m no more rested than when it began.

Maybe you’ve had that experience too. I’ve talked to people who have taken the vacation of a lifetime only to return home exhausted. Of course, it’s one thing to be tired but happy and quite another to be tired and stressed out. Where one goes and what one does are surely important ingredients for a good vacation but the mindset one brings to vacation is even more important. Are we merely continuing our daily routine with all its stresses from a remote location, or are we really unplugging, detaching and separating ourselves, if ever so briefly, from daily life?

The Lord himself had something to say about all this. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus invites his Apostles, “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest awhile” (Mk 6:31). He had sent his Apostles on their first mission trip. They returned tired but exhilarated. They told Jesus all about it. But Jesus sensed that soon their exhilaration would morph into exhaustion, for he could read their hearts. So, he invited them to rest. 

The “rest” Jesus had in mind was not playing pinochle, watching cable television and drinking beer. Nor was it wasting time in idleness and daydreaming. Jesus invited them to be in his company, to deepen their friendship with him, to quiet their souls, to rest their tired bodies, and to enter into that communion of love and life that Jesus, God’s Incarnate Son, enjoyed with his Father from all eternity. In other words, Jesus wanted to introduce them into his relationship with the God the Father, the One from whom they derived their very existence. In returning to the One who gave them life, he knew that the Apostles would not only be renewed but re-created.

Prayer is how we rest in the Lord. It isn’t always easy and can seem like hard work. Yet when we detach ourselves from daily routine, electronics and entertainment, we begin to find in prayer the peace we’ve been looking for. Prayer is nothing more than heeding the voice of the Savior who beckons to us in our weariness, “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light” (Mt 11: 28-30). 

Our recreation will only tire us out more thoroughly unless and until we allow the Lord to re-create us as we spend time in his presence. Seeking rest in activity, even restful activity, is ineffectual unless we allow our interior selves to have that rest we crave: to be in the presence of the One who loves us like no other, the One who knows us, understands us, cares for us and leads us to green pastures.

Have a good vacation, but be sure to vacation with and in the Lord! 

Read more Charity in Truth

The bucket list 

Beyond fear 

At my doorstep 

Will It Ever End?

Keeping it real 

Be at rest in God alone  

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