God Is Not On Vacation

It's July.  July is kind of the heart of summer.  We've had a jam-packed June and we're planning for a really active August.  So July is the time we can all relax and take a little bit of a breath.

That does not mean nothing is happening in the Wheatland Parish, however.  In fact, there will be quite a few things happening.  In Gettysburg, especially, we'll be starting the work of raising money to build a new addition to the church.  That means we'll be having meetings of the Building Committee and of the Fundraising Committee.  Those committees will not do their work alone.  They want and need your input.  If the new addition is going to happen, it's going to take everybody working together to make it happen.

The new addition in Gettysburg is not the only thing going on in the parish, though.  We'll continue to have our Wednesday worship services in Gettysburg throughout the summer.  In Onida, we'll continue to recruit people to work with our new audio/visual equipment, and we'll also learn more about what it can do.  In all three churches, we'll continue to work on mission projects.  In other words, it may be the middle of summer, but there are still plenty of things going on in our parish.

That's a good thing.  As Christians, we've been given a big job.  Jesus told us to go and make disciples of all nations.  We're supposed to baptize them and teach them what Jesus taught us.  That means we need to teach them to love God and love each other.  The best way for us to do that, of course, is for us to model the love of God and the love of others in our everyday lives.

We're not supposed to take a vacation from that.  Yes, Jesus spent some time apart, by himself, but Jesus did not spend that time lying on the beach listening to the ball game on the radio.  He spent that time in meditation and in prayer.  He used that time to get closer to God.

Now, I'm not saying we can't take a vacation.  What I'm saying is that, even when we're on vacation, we're still Christians.  If we're on vacation with our kids, we need to use that time to teach them more about God.  When we're on the road, we need to model Christian behavior, even when we're with strangers.

We also need to keep our minds and our hearts open to God's leading.  We never know when God might place a hurting person in our path, someone who desperately needs to hear an encouraging word or to know that someone cares.  That can happen when we're on vacation, when we're at the ball game, when we're at the convenience store, or when we're at work.  It can happen at any time and at any place.  The smile we give someone, the minute or two of conversation, the acknowledgment that there is a real person behind the cash register, can turn someone's day around.  It might even turn someone's life around.

It's okay to have some fun and enjoy the summer.  That's one of the reasons God gave it to us.  But even when we're on vacation, we are still God's people on God's earth.  When we go on vacation, let's make sure we take our faith in God with us.