As the year begins to come to its conclusion, thoughts of holidays and days at the beach are frequent. The next travel destination (or destinations, plural) easily fill the head as well. When you’re getting towards the end of an epically long slog at work, it’s normal to start thinking about the shape of your next break and how you’ve earned your version of an Eat, Pray, Love spiritual retreat.
But as great as One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia sounds – as alluded to above – there’s an element of entitlement that can be expressed in these matters.
It’s very easy to want to run off into holidays with wild abandonment and take a break – a long break – in the name of having earned it. But is that biblical?
Overwork and burnout are not biblical because they deny our human frailty and suggest that we think everything will fall apart if we aren’t there. Workaholism is for control freaks who don’t think that God has everything under control.
But at times, a love of discipline shouldn’t be too far away either. As it says in Ecclesiastes:
It is good to grasp the one and not let go of the other. Whoever fears God will avoid all extremes.
Whoever fears God will hold the balance of taking a break and working hard rightly weighted. Whoever fears God will be in step with his timing for all things.
Maybe we feel ready to move to a new workplace, but God wants us to complete a project in our current location, which will better prepare us for the next job.
Maybe we want to go on holidays, but God wants to give us a promotion first and then send us off with bags packed.
Maybe we’re ready to meet new colleagues, but God knows one of your current colleagues is about to move towards faith and you’re rightly placed right now to help them take that step.
Sometimes we try to kickstart the next season out of season.
We see a flower forming on the tree and take a leap, not realising that the fruit isn’t yet ripe. It was just the flower after all. The fruit is still to come.
When it’s time for a kickstart, God will usher in the next season.
In the meantime we trust that God knows best and that his next season for us will be far greater than anything we might imagine. Even if we don’t know when exactly that is right now:
It is the glory of God to conceal a matter.
Yet one day these things will be known. And a new season of rest and rejuvenation will begin.
However, seeming that it’s not that season for me just yet, I should probably keep my head down and get on with it.
That being said, this teacher has 20 work days (not that we’re counting) left for the year before the long summer break starts.
It can’t come soon enough.
Yours in week seven,
Alison
