It might seem like a stupid question to you. Why do we like – dare I say love – vacations so much? One might suggest that the reasons people like vacations are as varied as the people who take them and the places they go. But, I would offer up that there are two reasons at the core of our common affection for vacations.
First, no sensible person truly loves their day job. Before you argue this point, remember, the burden connected to daily work is part of the curse. Even those who love what they do or see great value in it as holy vocation given by God are still are ultimately burdened by it because work is since the fall always a struggle to complete. The curse is always a burden. And so the thought of break from the daily grind is ultimately a joyous thought that goes back to a day when the toil of work was not known, before God said, “By the sweat of your brow.†It is also a taste also of what is to come, when God’s people enter into his eternal rest where work will never cause perspiration or stress.
Secondly, this world is under the curse. And when we linger in one place too long, it becomes all too obvious that our area of the world, regardless of our love for it, is not perfect. The groans of the creation get louder and louder. And so we need to get away. Oh, it is true, that everywhere we go is also cursed, but the unfamiliarity allows us to pretends that it is not. Toes hanging over the Grand Canyon assume they have found paradise. Toes running through the sand at the resort believe they have found the place free of groans. Toes revisiting a place from their past believe that they have traveled back close enough to Eden to be less burdened by it all.
And this is the reason that vacations cannot persist too long. Because if they do, we lose the illusion that we have found respite free of the trouble of this world. The troubles of this world start to appear in the middle of our paradise. And the necessity of work calls with all its relentless persistence.
But vacations, for a while, take us back to Eden. It takes us forward to the new heavens and earth. And that is why we like – dare I say love – vacations so much.
