Summer can be exhilarating as the bucket list’s check marks multiply and Instagram memories are legitimately likeable.
It can also be seductive. When sun and fun meet, it can start getting a little intoxicating as you start skipping time with God.
In essence, vacations’ vigor and “what’s next” can sneakily lead you into taking a vacation from God.
The most spiritually mature are not exempt. An older King David was on vacation when he saw a naked girl and the ramifications of his “taking time off” from God rattled his personal, family and royal life for the rest of his life. No one can afford a vacation from God and not be in danger. It can turn a king into a Peeping Tom.
God created time and the beauty of the getaway we want to enjoy. If He’s in the middle of it, why not put Him in the middle of it?
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: Like all good things, vacations can be the most wondrous of portals or the worst traps. A vacation can be magical - but watch any slight of hand.
In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army…One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”
2 Samuel 11:1-5 NIV