Article June 11, 1979 Issue

Have a good vacation

BARBARA-JEAN STINSON

Who doesn't love the promise of a vacation—even a few days away from job demands? A period of well-deserved relaxation has a natural place for many people. These periods should be pleasant times, filled with opportunities for expressing love and for the refreshing enjoyment of God-inspired activities, quiet opportunities for thoughtful reflection. But those free times don't always turn out that way. What is it that would rob us of the joy we can bring to these times of relaxation?

Isn't it a mistaken estimate of what contentment really is? Materially based thinking would try to impose on us the belief that we cannot be really happy unless we are conforming to its standards of contentment. It usually presents two alternatives: time-wasting inactivity or energy-wasting overactivity.

Neither inactivity nor overactivity can actually provide the rest and joy a good vacation or a few days away from work are expected to bring. Restful activity has its source in God, the Giver of all good. We find it in the measure we identify ourselves as God's expressions. For instance, thinking of ourselves as mortals needing a change of pace, something different, to experience true relaxation, is failing to appreciate the good already ours as God's ideas. We're not really lacking, tired, lonely mortals who need someone or something "out there" for refreshment and renewal. Man, our true identity, is the full expression of the divine Mind, God. We need to appreciate man's unity with God; then we will begin to know and enjoy all the characteristics of a God-governed life.

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