Why You Need to Stop and Getaway

Susan and I caught our breath this week by getting away for a couple of days to Solvang and Santa Barbara. Time away from a season packed with ministry, life, and busyness has a way of making my dog-eared perspectives crisp again.

Some seasons you know are over—the rain stops, the last game is played, the sneezing subsides, and the taxes are done. But in other seasons sometimes we have to stop and call out, “Season’s over. Time for a break.”

But saying “no” to busyness and “yes” to taking a break is counterintuitive.

“Busyness,” warns theologian Barbara Brown Taylor, is an “imposter virtue. Real virtues,” she writes, “make one feel like doing good, but imposter virtues make one feel good about doing bad. Busyness keeps us from lingering on anything long enough to engage it at any depth. Busyness convinces us that there is always something else we need to be doing. Busyness exhausts, embitters, divides, and demoralizes.”

I find that ceasing my busyness and calling a season to a halt is an act of courage and faith. It’s courageous because I stand up to the many activities that promise to make my life more important and more justified. I say, “See you later.”

It’s an act of faith that there will be a later and that in the meantime my heavenly Father will use rest to prepare me for the season yet to come. Selah.