Vacation from God?

My column in Mindanao Daily, BusinessWeek Mindanao and Cagayan de Oro Times.

I am still staying at my hiding place - just 2 more days. A lonely beach. Just relaxing. Next week: back to school. New enrollees are waiting. Back to the office. Clients are asking for appointments already.

Yes, from to time, I need a refreshing pause. Vacation comes from the Latin word "vacare", which literally means, to be empty, to render oneself inoperative. Vacation is freedom or release from tension and pressure of work. It is the rest from some occupation, business or activities.

Strictly speaking, vacation concerns those who are in school or studying in colleges and universities. For professionals, however, furlough would be the appropriate term. 

Why we take a vacation? "All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy". Remember it? There is always a limit to psychical as well as mental activities. We are not robots nor are we slaves. Neither should we be workaholics, so goes the modern term for those who work themselves to death. We are persons endowed by God with free will and intelligence. The will to work should always be tempered by the intelligence to rest awhile to acquire new energy.

That's what I am doing 4 or 5times a year. 

Speaking about God: Is there a vacation from God? Of course not. There is no such thing as vacation from God of from our religious activities. One of the best known religious poems in English is "The Hound of Heaven". It was written by Francis Thompson who tried to run away from God. He wanted to have a vacation from Him. He compares God to a hound chasing his soul. In reality, it is a story of Thompson's own life.

As a boy, he had in ended to become a priest, but he was lazy. So his father enrolled him in a medical school where the young Francis contracted the opium habit which almost wrecked his mind and body.

He became a beggar, slinking through the slums, his means of survival earned by shining shoes, selling matches and holding horses. Through the kindness of a poor girl, Francis met he couple Meynell, who recognized his talent an inner goodness. Through them, he has "caught" by God's love.

How Thompson tried to run away from God, and how God "hunted" him, how divine love caught up with him - shows clearly the fact that in this world, we can have a vacation from physical and mental activities, but never from God.