Getaway

Thanks to great friends that are coming to stay with our kids, tomorrow morning, Randy and I will throw some clothes in a suitcase, grab our sand chairs, and head for a little dive in downtown Rehoboth.

We have no agenda for the weekend. We might take a bike ride, go to the movies, play miniature golf, or even drive over to Ocean City one evening.

A couple things are for sure though. At some point over the weekend, we’ll take a walk on the boardwalk and laugh together about the little store we’ve often joked about opening there. We’ll take long walks on the beach, we’ll laugh and cry, we’ll talk about how we can turn the challenges in our lives into opportunities, and we’ll dream about the future together.

For us, there is just something about a getaway to Rehoboth that reenergizes, refocuses, and refreshes our hearts and spirits.

The Bible talks another getaway. Psalms 27, in The Message translation, calls it the “perfect getaway.” It says it’s the only quiet, secure place in this noisy world; it’s far from the buzz of traffic. This amazing getaway? Studying at His feet; contemplating His beauty!

Lessons

Lessons on humility, lessons on trust, lessons on patience, lessons on un-forgiveness . . . enough already! If the lessons kill you – are they still considered lessons or are they then seen for what they really are . . . a slow and painful death? Just kill me quickly I say!

Ah, but it is never quickly – instead it proves again and again to be a slow and painful process – torturous! The question is, of course, when we say, “kill me quickly” do we really mean it? I think not! We don’t really want to die! We fight until there is no fight left in us. It is in that moment that we say, “just finish me off, the pain is too much to bear!”

Interestingly enough, it is then and only then, in that dark presence of death, that we find the relief we are longing for. It’s just not found in the place we thought it would be. Somehow it is found in death . . . the death of self so that our lives become His.