I started this year by taking a holiday. On New Year’s day, my wife, children, and I traded Delhi’s bitter cold for the warm, sunny beaches of Goa. Usually, we pair ministry travel with a short break at the end. But this was the first “pure holiday” we have taken since the pandemic.
By the mercy of God, I am not a workaholic. My wife and I regularly take a measure of the weight on our schedule, make adjustments, and pay attention to our bodies and souls.
Since urban life is restless and unrelenting, we have to fight for a weekly rhythm to honour the Sabbath and a daily rhythm to nourish our souls. It is not a flawless habit but it is active. But I did not expect to feel the disorienting and comforting power of taking a holiday.
The Validity of Taking a Holiday
In 2018, India was the most vacation-deprived country in the world. Additionally, according to a report published by Expedia in 2023, “Globally, vacation deprivation levels have surpassed pandemic-era rates and are the highest they’ve been in 10 years.”
In the price-conscious, work-worshipping context of India, ceasing from labour can feel like ceasing to worship. It can feel as fruitful as burning money when we could be burning the midnight oil. But in God’s original purposes, rest is essential for every labourer in Christ and for any fruitful labour for Christ.
The Lord ordained feasts, festivals, and the Sabbath for his people (Lev. 23:1-3). Even the word holiday traces its origin to Old English haligdæg: “holy day, consecrated day, religious anniversary.”
In his TGC article, Joel Busby says, “On a weekly and annual basis, Israel would move their minds, souls, and bodies to rhythms of God’s grace and provision. These rhythms would shape them, again and again, in the confidence that comes from knowing the Lord.”
Taking a holiday is rebellion against our inflated sense of self-importance that keeps us bound to our labour. It is to say to the Lord, “You are the Creator and sustainer of all things, not me.”
The confident premise behind any retreat from labour is this: “Even when I am not working, God is working.”
Preparing to Take a Holiday
My wife and I looked forward to this holiday with great eagerness. We booked our travel and stay months in advance. Then we talked about it with our daughter and each other—building it up in our minds, counting down to it, and encouraging each other with the thought of it whenever we were feeling down.
As a family, we prayed and asked God regularly to make it a special time for us. We asked for rest in our bodies, minds, and hearts. We prayed against retaliation, resistance, and any opposition—natural or spiritual.
Before I left, I delegated responsibility, completed assignments, and organised things in a way that I could enjoy the break without worrying about anything. It takes a lot of work to prepare for a holiday.
The Comforting Power of a Holiday
By the mercy of God, taking a holiday exceeded all our expectations. When we arrived, our responsibilities shrank down from a list of things to do on a deadline to a blank page that felt like a lifeline. The pace of urban city life eased from what felt like a brisk, long walk to a slow, casual stroll.
I was not labouring as a pastor, writer, preacher, trainer, or teacher. We had no appointments, meetings, schedules, or deadlines. Our world shrank down to the size of two adults, a little girl, and an infant. It became smaller and bigger at the same time.
For 9 days, our daily schedule involved waking up late, breakfast on the beach, afternoon naps, jumping into the pool, and watching a murder mystery on Netflix.
Our minds had the chance to catch up with our bodies. It is a powerful feeling when your heart, mind, and body are bound together in unity. I felt a lightness in spirit and body that felt like Eden before the fall, or perhaps the world at the return of Christ.
Taking a holiday was a gift of grace we needed more than we realised it.
The Disorienting Power of a Holiday
At first, a holiday feels completely unnatural. You move from a familiar place to a foreign environment. It takes some labour to find your bearings. Your ordinarily pre-occupied mind is free but it does not know what to do with its freedom. It takes some time to think without thinking about work. Then it is strange to see what you think about when you have the time to think.
A holiday provides the opportunity for what lies beneath to rise to the surface. Like a dormant volcano that suddenly turned active, my mind erupted with thoughts, desires, fears, and longings. What was in the darkness was clawing its way into the spotlight, demanding that I pay attention.
Listening to your thoughts can be a disorienting and disturbing thing. My mind swung from decades past to decades in the future—at once imaginative and nostalgic, filled with regret and full of gratitude, bitter and broken, shaken and still.
God felt near and far at the same time (Ps. 139:7-12).
I did not know how to pray or what to say. So I prayed the psalms to give words to my feelings. I found refuge in the psalmists’s expressions of grief, anger, despair, gratitude, worship, and wonder (Ps. 13, 15, 16).
Taking a holiday gives your heart the chance to tend to its needs. It is as disorienting and comforting as admission into a hospital. It separates you from the familiar so it can send you back to it with renewed strength.
But taking a holiday alone is not sufficient. There is no beach, mountain, palace, cabin, or city in the world that can give us the rest we really need.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Taking a holiday can take you away from restless places but it cannot take away restlessness. Sometimes it only amplifies it. You cannot take a holiday from yourself.
If our hearts are restless, we do not need a holiday. We need the rest that comes from God’s ruling power in our hearts (Col. 3:15, 1 Pet. 3:15).
Our deepest restlessness is rooted in alienation from God. So our greatest rest comes from union with him. As Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Without his rest, you can have everything and enjoy nothing. But to possess Christ is to enjoy anything because he has become our everything (Phil 4:11-13, 1 Thess. 5:18).
Because he finished his work of redemption, we can begin to rest in his salvation (Matt. 11:28, Heb. 4:9-10).
