Those of you who have been reading this blog for a year or more will find some of what follows a bit familiar… I have to re-learn things (many things!) more than once… especially when it comes to living like Jesus day in, day out. So – I hope you will find something helpful in what follows, even if it’s a “reminder” of what you already know!

The French, who excel at leisure, talk about going “en vacances” when they are away from work. Literally, this means “on vacancy”, but it is translated “on holiday”… 

The British, likewise, go “on holiday.” (Never “on vacation.”)

We Yanks? We either “take time off” or we “go on vacation.”

Going and Taking – what?

Etymology matters here. “Vacation” derives from “vacate” – to empty, to leave behind. People “taking time off” logically go “on vacation” – the emphasis is on departing that state of being in which they are “on”. 

By contrast, “holidays” are the modern rendering of “holy days” – days sacred, days set apart, days for Sabbath.

Alas. 

Even acknowledging that secular Europeans probably don’t prioritize religious holiness while on holiday, the way our respective cultures talk about pauses in our vocational lives definitely confirms a longstanding cliché: Europeans work to live, while Americans live to work. 

Beyond the European Leisure Gap…

Some new wrinkles, unique to our time (both “off” and “on”), occur to me: 

• In our days of endless pandemic panic and work-at-home, “going” anywhere may or may not figure in our vacation plans (perhaps we have been working on the beach for months, or we don’t want to risk being Covid-detained in a foreign port, or we no longer enjoy leaving our homes for any reason). 

Since “going on vacation” requires “going” – and since “staycations” don’t really count as vacations when we are home most of the time, anyway – are Americans less and less able to authentically “take time off”?

• When almost everywhere “away” is digitally tethered to everywhere else, don’t we tend to simply take our work with us, on vacation? Thereby not vacating anything? Thereby staying “on” even while we’re “off”?

• Habituated as we are to an air conditioned, sedentary physical norm and a constantly-stimulated, screen-dominated mental norm – do we even have the tools (and / or the motivation) to make the transition to a different set of norms?

United we google

It’s interesting to me that our culture talks as much as it does about divisions and silos, compartmentalization and fragmentation – all while almost universally embracing a lifestyle of online work-play-socialize-politicize-shop-recreate… a lifestyle without divisions, silos, compartments, or fragments… a lifestyle, in fact, without boundaries. 

Neanderthal Doppelgangers?

In some ways, the free-flowing form of days spent screen-locked resembles the distant past – the time before clocks and calendars artificially divided days into quantifiable units. Hunter-gatherers did not take vacations; agrarian primitives rested only when their rest wouldn’t diminish harvest yields.

But in other ways, our online existence goes beyond those ancient rhythms in profound ways. Our ancestors had to stop working when it got too dark to see. Our ancestors had to adapt their tasks, responding to temperature and weather. Our ancestors had to focus while staying aware of potential, immediate, physical threats.

By contrast, electricity means we can be online – doing anything and everything – no matter what time of day or night, impervious to outside conditions. Absent saber tooth tigers or aggressive neighbors, we can stay infinitely and pleasantly distracted, indefinitely. (Well, unless we live in the Ukraine. Or Syria. Or Taiwan. But that’s a different blog post…)

It seems to me that our boundary-less-ness costs us pleasures and privileges that even our hunter-gatherer forebears could take for granted. 

Just a few examples: 

1. The ability to sit around a campfire, conversing with people who were all fully present / looking at one another in the face. 
2. The ability to go to sleep at night without fear that you were missing out on some important event (or even some unimportant event for which your friends were all inexplicably awake).
3. The ability to work out differences, in person, with other people – an ability honed by necessity and proximity and non-negotiable physical reality.

Why Jesus

For Christians, taking a holiday is not optional – we are commanded to take a holiday, every single week. 

“Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.”

(Exodus 20:8 – 11)

“Remember the Sabbath, and keep it holy” … that’s God, laying down the law, about regular holidays!

Jesus’s example adds exponentially to this standard of weekly holiday observance. Jesus sought quiet time, alone, with God, almost every morning. Jesus recharged after particularly grueling days of ministry by seeking quiet time, alone, with God. And Jesus taught and invited his disciples to (you guessed it) be refreshed by quiet time, apart, with God.

A plan of action… for rest

There are only a few weeks of official “summer” left (despite the fact that Texas will be baking until Halloween).

So, have you taken a holiday yet?

Perhaps you’ve already taken time off – gone on vacation – but feel as frazzled and spent as if you hadn’t…?

Or perhaps you’ve got a getaway planned and you are counting down the days to departure, desperate for a break but planning to pack/take your laptop phone tablet with you?

Whatever this summer has looked like for any of us thus far, it’s not too late to build the kind of Sabbath rest into it that God commands and Jesus models. But we have to be strategic – we have to acknowledge the radical nature of our quest – or we will be effortlessly sucked into the maw of the internet wherever we are, whatever our intentions.

Some suggestions, for turning vacations into holidays AND for building Sabbath into the routine of our weekly world:

• Meal times WITHOUT phones. (Turn them off and put them where they cannot be seen.)
• Meal times WITH your people.
• Start and end the day in the Word. (On paper, NOT on your phone.)
• Second thing in the morning and next to last thing at night, step outside and look at the sky. If practical, take a short walk. If possible, take a long walk. Talk to God the whole way.
• Read a good book. (On paper, NOT on your tablet.)
• Listen to worship music while in your car. Sing. Loudly. Enjoy the looks you get from those next to you at the red light.
• Keep your bedroom screen-free – no phones, no devices, no television. You will sleep better – it’s statistically irrefutable.
• Declare a Technology Sabbath. No Screens Whatsoever for a set amount of time. If you have trouble detoxing, take that as confirmation that you really need the Technology Sabbath.
• Remember that one of Christianity’s most important distinctives is the Incarnation – God put on flesh, our flesh, to be with us! That means the physical world is not just God’s Creation, it is also God’s priority… and we need to live IN it, with Him.