Articles - From the Vicar

Dear Friends,

No More Worries for a Week or Two

The time of year has come round again when many of us "get away from it all". We may head for the hills or for the beach, for the museums or the nightclubs, for an island or a Disneyland. We may be looking for peace and tranquility or for excitement and entertainment. However, wherever we go we probably want to "get away", to leave behind our work and our ordinary routines, as well as the pressures and hopefully the problems of life. And it is amazing how refreshing can be a change of scenery, with time to relax and spend as we like, and new things to see and experience.

However, it can be a bit difficult coming home and taking up the strain again! I think this is especially so if we have looked on the holiday as a temporary escape from problems. We can never really "escape" but we can find rest, refreshment, re-creation and possibly reorientation to help us cope better. When we forget this we can find ourselves dreaming of moving once and for all to that idyllic spot. We conveniently ignore the difficulties often faced by those living there all year round, or that many of our "problems" would follow us there because often they are less in the people and things around us as in ourselves. We can also find ourselves almost living for our holidays, as if all our planning and dreaming somehow provides some degree of compensation for the daily grind. The way we are living today seems to be all or nothing; flat out, frantic work and activity or a complete halt for two weeks.

It is a sobering thought that most of the population of the world, and many within our own community don't have the chance to get away. How do they cope? They certainly can't escape their situation. However, they must find the strength for their daily lives from somewhere. I am sure that many find it in prayer, in short times of quiet, spent alone with their thoughts and their God. This of course has been the way people through the majority of human history have "got away from it all" and recharged their batteries. Sadly, and damagingly, many of us live at such a pace that we often say we haven't got the time to draw on the refreshment and recreation and reorientation that prayer brings. Life becomes a mad rush until the next holiday when we flop, forgetting God just as much on our holidays as the habit has not been nurtured in our working lives.

So where does this leave us? Thanking God for rest and recreation, and determining to make space for it in our daily lives. Thanking God for holidays if we are privileged to have them, trying to approach them in the right way, and not forgetting to spare a thought and a prayer for those who are not able to have them. And remembering that in prayer we have a way to "get away from it all" that we can use any time, through which we can find the inner resources we need.

With prayers and good wishes

David

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay