Taking a Break… For Yourself
I recently got back from a week’s vacation and it was great. We spent some time in the Boone area of North Carolina, seeing the mountains and taking in a little cooler air than we have here in Florida this time of year.
It is always refreshing to get away from your daily duties and spend time with people you love and do things that you love doing. Everyone looks forward to vacation or at least they should. Unfortunately many people these days are so pressed and pressured by their work, that they are taking fewer and fewer vacations. In 2007, 25 percent of American workers had no paid vacation time, meaning that their employer did not provide for them to get away. Worse though is that 25 percent of Americans who had paid vacation time available, took none of it. Another 35 percent used only a portion of the vacation time available to them. When you look at the figures, only 15 percent of American workers used all of their available vacation time.
The quote comes from a Seattle Times article about vacation time:
“The idea of somebody going away for two weeks is really becoming a thing of the past,” said Mike Pina, a spokesman for AAA. “It’s kind of sad, really, that people can’t seem to leave their jobs anymore.”
Shrinking-vacation syndrome has gotten so bad that at least one major U.S. company, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, has taken to closing its entire national operation twice a year to ensure that people stop working: for about 10 days over Christmas and five days or so around the Fourth of July. “We aren’t doing this to push people out the door,” said Barbara Kraft, a partner in the human-resources office. “But we wanted to create an environment where people could walk away and not worry about missing a meeting, a conference call or 300 e-mails.”
The company tracks vacation time so that when employees fall behind, they are reminded through an electronic nag that they should be getting out of the office more. And posters evoking lazy days away from work were put up in the New York offices. Hint. Hint.
So what does this have to do with living a Plus Life? Well, think about the ultimate “working man”, God. The Bible says that He works so hard that He “never slumbers and never sleeps”. Jesus said that “My Father has been working until now and I have been working”. You think you’ve got a busy job, try keeping up with 6 billion people.
God, however, has built in renewal time. When He created man, He created Him with the ability and the need to sleep. We cannot work and live without sleep. Our bodies need the rest and the renewal time, although some today are trying to live without sleep and it is showing. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, for example, drowsiness and fatigue cause more than 100,000 traffic accidents each year. Lack of sleep can be expensive: The National Commission on Sleep Disorders estimates that sleep deprivation costs $150 billion a year in higher stress and reduced workplace productivity.
Take it a step further and a lack of sleep time can cause some serious health problems. Studies have showed that sleep deprivation can affect such things as our appetite, weight gain, diabetes, the strength of your immune system, and even your chance of developing depression. According to a CNN report, in 2004, University of Chicago researchers restricted a group of men to only 4 hours of sleep per night. After just 2 nights, the men had an 18 percent decrease in leptin, a hormone that tells your brain when you are full, and a 28 percent increase in ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger. These results were reinforced last October by a study of almost 10,000 adults that found that people who slept fewer than 7 hours a night were more likely to be obese than those who got 7 hours of shut-eye. Chronic sleep deprivation causes changes in metabolism that produce a state that stimulates hunger. Sleep deprivation can also affect how your body handles insulin; insulin resistance puts you at risk for weight gain and diabetes.
God also has designed into man’s existence a day of rest. When He created the world, Genesis says that God worked six days, and on the seventh day, God rested. Following that pattern, God called His people to set aside a Sabbath day, a day of worship and renewal. To live a Plus Life, we have to pay attention not only to our work time, our relationship skills, but also how we handle our spiritual life. Feeling fresh involves not just our bodies and our mind, but our spirit as well. Refreshing your spirit through regular worship, prayer, Bible study, enjoyable fellowship with others, serving God (yes, serving is refreshing if you serve with the right heart) and simply enjoying his presence daily can help you feel better because you are relating to the one who made you. Colossians says that we were made through Christ and for Christ, in other words we were designed to live and work with Him. Keeping your spiritual life fresh, keeps us working like we were made.
I have been just as guilty as anyone on not taking this seriously. God however does take it seriously. He has designed our lives with these times of refreshment and we should take advantage of them. We worry about productivity, about missing something, but if we spend time refreshing our bodies and our spirits, we will be more productive than if we deprive ourselves of these things.
Many a person has gotten lost in the chase to keep up with their tasks, meetings, e-mails and project deadlines. We are working more, resting less and are more stressed, less happy and definitely not more refreshed. Somewhere in all of this, we have lost the true pattern that God created for being the best that we can be. I saw this sign on a secretary’s desk:
If I am not here,
I have gone to look for myself,
If I get back before I return,
Tell myself to wait for me,
We have some issues to deal with.
Thanks,
Me, Myself and I
We aren’t better if we work more than others, take fewer vacations, neglect our family and friends, miss church, sleep less and experience all the symptoms of someone who is overworked, over stressed and under refreshed. These are not signs of a person who is healthy and living a Plus Life. If we allow the pressures of the world to drive us to this state, then we are denying the very things that God has designed into our lives to help us live a Plus Life.
As the new school year is starting and we get back to normal routines, maybe we should think upon our vacation time, go to bed when we should and make sure that we participate in taking a day to worship the Lord. Take some time to find the real you, the person you could be if you were refreshed, fully charged and alert. A Plus Life may just be a week of vacation or a few hours of sleep away….
