During each vacation for the past couple of years, I have made a habit of reading Josef Pieper’s Leisure the Basis of Culture. He writes, “not to give advice and draw up a line of action” but to “make men think.”

And these are my thoughts.

The soul of leisure is not idleness. It is not simply a break from work or the motivation to return to work. The soul of leisure is celebration.

Celebration is the point at which the three elements of leisure come to a focus: relaxation, effortlessness, and superiority of “active leisure” to all functions…The meaning of celebration, we have said, is man’s affirmation of the universe and his experiencing the world in an aspect other than its everyday way. – Josef Pieper, Leisure The Basis of Culture, p. 65

Only a worshipper of God can truly experience leisure.

The celebration of divine worship, then, is the deepest of the springs by which leisure is fed and continues to be vital…Leisure cannot be achieved at all when it is sought as a means to an end, even though that end be “the salvation of Western civilization.” Celebration of God in worship cannot be done unless it is done for its own sake. That most sublime form of affirmation of the world as a whole is the fountainhead of leisure. – Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture, p. 72

A great vacation is not a tool to fix a burnt-out life. It cannot become a savior to restore a life that is bent and weakened with stress fractures. Even the best vacation will buckle under the weight of those expectations. It will never deliver. A great vacation begins by laying hold of man’s purpose, and specifically, man’s purpose in God’s creation.

Celebration, feasting, wonder, and contentment are the hallmarks of a great vacation. This is my Father’s world, and I have been set within it as his image bearer. In many ways, “a great vacation” is merely a drawn-out experience of the weekly rhythm of feasting and resting experienced each Lord’s Day. An extended meditation upon creation, fall, redemption, and restoration becomes the rich soil for the celebration of leisure.

And the past three weeks have been filled with celebration.