Holiday

This will be the last blog I write for a few weeks because I’m going on holiday! And I am very much looking forward to having a break. It’s been a challenging time and to get away will hopefully be an opportunity to catch up with myself! Holidays it seems to me are a privilege. My best guess is that most of the world never gets a holiday. It’s a thing strangely reserved for a few people who have the means and the opportunity. Put it this way, there are no holidays in a refugee camp. There are no holidays for those stranded in Afghanistan. There are no holidays for many, many slaves around the world today. There are no holidays for the poor. And yet we think of a holiday as a right. And as a status symbol. Where we choose to go on holiday says something about us and maybe that’s what we want. We want to make a statement about who we are by telling others where we went on holiday. It sounds like I don’t like holidays. That’s not true. I do. Mostly I don’t want to come home from holidays! But I recognise that it’s a privilege that most of the world doesn’t have. And the thing about holidays is they are not the real world. Whether I like it or not, I have to come home from a holiday. I have to come back to the world as it really is. And that’s the world in which I actually live. Lisa will tell me that when I’m on holiday, I can be quite a different person than when I’m in the grind of daily life. That’s not a criticism, it’s a statement of fact. And, my best guess is that it will be true for many of us. When I’m on holiday I’m more relaxed. I am! Little things don’t irritate me in the way normally do. Sad, but true! And when I reflect on the question the minister asked a couple of weeks ago in his sermon, “how would your life be different if it was Jesus living it with his heart?” I think I might be more like I’m when I’m on holiday: less stressed, more relaxed, more able to cope. Which begs the question: why am I not more like that anyway? Jesus lived in the full and deep knowledge of his Father’s love. He knew love without limits. Perhaps for me to be more like I am when I’m on holiday in everyday life, it would be good for me to live more fully in the great, deep and magnificent love of God. Just like Jesus.