Soul Refreshing

Shortly after we left for our vacation, I received a text from a good friend:

“Hope you guys have an awesome time! May it be refreshing to your souls. May your time with God during this trip be sweeter, richer, more vibrant. May that be the thing that stands out when the trip is all over.”

It was a wonderful blessing and a great reminder of what a vacation should be. What greater purpose for a vacation than to enrich my time with God? What better result could there be than to come home from vacation and feel closer to God than when I left? It is a great perspective on vacation - one that I don’t always have when I leave. Too often my focus is just on escape - escape the daily grind, escape the worries of the job, even escape the burdens of church leadership. But my friend reminded me of a much better focus.

When I was in high school I worked for a farmer moving irrigation sprinklers. In some fields I would move 30 to 50 sections of 12 foot pipe, trying to connect and lay them in a straight line. As I attached each section it was important to keep the whole line the same distance from its previous location. If the sections varied too much, especially at the end of the line, the water from the sprinklers would not overlap properly. The longer the line, the harder it was to keep it straight, but the farmer gave me one valuable piece of advice - “Keep your sights on where you are going, not on where you have been.” At the opposite end of the field was usually a bright orange jug hanging from the fence that was the target. After each section was laid down I would look down the line of pipe to make sure it was headed for the jug. Of course I didn’t always remember the advice and sometimes I would catch myself looking back at my line, trying to straighten what I had done. It was amazing how that never worked. Invariably I made things worse when I tried to straighten the line behind me. I might make sections of the pipes straighter, but my line would be pointing in the wrong direction, off line from the jug. When I kept my focus on the jug at the other end, the line of pipe might not be perfectly straight, but it always ended up where it needed to be. 

It is a life lesson that I need to be reminded of often, even on vacation. I have a tendency to look at what I am trying to leave behind, instead of what I am trying to move towards. My line my not always be perfectly straight when I keep looking ahead, but at least I end up in the right place. It is such a simple idea, but one that seems so easy to forget. So, on this vacation, I am trying to set my sights on drawing closer to God, because it is always better to focus on who you want to move towards rather than on what are trying to leave behind. 

Thank you, friend, for the reminder!