According to a survey by Expedia.com, the average American worker got 18 vacation days last year but only used 14.
By comparison, workers in France got 37 vacation days last year and used 35 of them while the average worker in Great Britain received 28 vacation days and took 25, Expedia said.
That means Americans gave up 448 million earned but unused vacation days. Considering the average wage of $39,208 for a full-time worker, that's $67.5 billion worth of time.
Only 38% of Americans said that they take all of their vacation days, according to the Expedia survey, with most only using a small portion of their time off.
Hey, I know. I have always been something of a workaholic. It helps that I have always loved what I did (love what I do), but that can't be all of it. It was just always very hard for me to take time off, to really escape from work.
The advent of internet and cell phone didn't help. It wasn't that I called people constantly in order to work, but I always took calls from people who didn't know I was on vacation or taking a day off, and felt compelled to help or provide whatever service I could.
Besides not taking all our vacation time, I can't help but wonder if anyone works "just'' 40 hours a week. I know I have consistently worked more than a 40-hour work week. Not that I kept track - and that's part of the issue, because I didn't. I just did the job, whatever it took, how ever many hours it took, how ever many days of the week it means I worked without taking a full day off.
Then I re-read the Ten Commandments.
In particular, the part about "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy."
If you're as old as me (and who is?), maybe you remember when nothing was open on Sunday. And my father was always off on Saturday, working in the yard or cleaning gutters or sweeping driveways - or rather, watching to make sure I did those things to his standard.
But now, well, even if we go to church on Sunday, chances are we end up checking email or listening to phone messages or maybe even doing a little paperwork in order to get ahead for Monday. And Saturday? Who thinks anything of a quick trip to the office on Saturday morning, or maybe even just working a full day, telling ourselves its only "every now and then?"
In that regards, we've come full circle to the Children of Israel before they left Egypt. Back in those days, there was no day set aside for rest. How could there be? There were crops to watch or flocks to tend. You couldn't risk a day away because it was your livelihood, and if you didn't take care of these things, nobody else was going to stop a sheep from wandering off or rabbits from eating your corn.
But then God went and gave this commandment: "Observe the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy."
I believe one of the mistakes we made was thinking 'remembering the Sabbath' meant going to church. But the Sabbath is based on the Genesis story, where God worked six days and on the seventh he "rested."
While the Jews, in particular, still worship on the seventh day of the week, modern Christians began to meet on the first day of the week - Sunday - because we see that as the day of Christ's resurrection.
And if you look at Romans 14, Paul seems to be saying it doesn't matter what day you worship, as long as you set aside one day to honor God.
So what could this commandment mean to us, today?
Hebrews 4 talks about the Sabbath in two ways: one, in a sense that we no longer try to earn our eternal rest in God, but also that God wanted the Hebrews to set aside a day for rest from our labor, just as God set aside a day to rest after creating the world.
That was radical for a culture that lived by field and flock. Taking a true day off meant trusting that your field and flock would still be there when you came back to work, that nothing bad would happen - the crops wouldn't die or get eaten, the flocks wouldn't wander off or get eaten.
In short, it forced the children of Israel to trust God to take care of them one day every week. It meant putting their faith in God that He would look after everything that needed to be done for that one day, as if God were saying, "Trust me. I can handle this. You can get back to it tomorrow."
"Holy'' means set apart. The Sabbath was set aside because it was 'set apart' from the other six days by the absense of work, not the presence of worship. Actually, we should worship every day, in everything we do, not just on Sunday (or Saturday).
The principal of the Sabbath remains true. What that means is, for those of us that refuse to take a day off, that God wants us to stop. Trust God that nothing is so important that we can't leave it to Him to take care of for one day.
And if you don't have time to do that, what are you saying? That God is not really big enough or trustworthy enough to take care of your work for one day?
If we do that, then we violate the first three Commandments: We have made work our God; we justify it with the idea that God created us to work and is honored by our doing good work; and we use God's name in vain to justify what we're doing.
A long time ago, in the time of the Reformation, we Protestants adopted a great work ethic that said we don't work to get rich or out of competition or for our own glory, but we work for God's glory. We work hard at whatever we do to honor God, not ourselves.
Unfortunately, we began to work so hard that we forgot that while we work for God's glory, we also give Him glory by not working and saying we trust Him to handle things while we rest and enjoy family and friends and recharge our batteries.
Unfortunately, it's a lot easier said than done. I have to force myself not to work.
One more example of how we take something good that God created - work - and distort it.
I'd like to take a day off from that, too.
Only 38% of Americans said that they take all of their vacation days, according to the Expedia survey, with most only using a small portion of their time off.
Hey, I know. I have always been something of a workaholic. It helps that I have always loved what I did (love what I do), but that can't be all of it. It was just always very hard for me to take time off, to really escape from work.
The advent of internet and cell phone didn't help. It wasn't that I called people constantly in order to work, but I always took calls from people who didn't know I was on vacation or taking a day off, and felt compelled to help or provide whatever service I could.
Besides not taking all our vacation time, I can't help but wonder if anyone works "just'' 40 hours a week. I know I have consistently worked more than a 40-hour work week. Not that I kept track - and that's part of the issue, because I didn't. I just did the job, whatever it took, how ever many hours it took, how ever many days of the week it means I worked without taking a full day off.
Then I re-read the Ten Commandments.
In particular, the part about "Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy."
If you're as old as me (and who is?), maybe you remember when nothing was open on Sunday. And my father was always off on Saturday, working in the yard or cleaning gutters or sweeping driveways - or rather, watching to make sure I did those things to his standard.
But now, well, even if we go to church on Sunday, chances are we end up checking email or listening to phone messages or maybe even doing a little paperwork in order to get ahead for Monday. And Saturday? Who thinks anything of a quick trip to the office on Saturday morning, or maybe even just working a full day, telling ourselves its only "every now and then?"
In that regards, we've come full circle to the Children of Israel before they left Egypt. Back in those days, there was no day set aside for rest. How could there be? There were crops to watch or flocks to tend. You couldn't risk a day away because it was your livelihood, and if you didn't take care of these things, nobody else was going to stop a sheep from wandering off or rabbits from eating your corn.
But then God went and gave this commandment: "Observe the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy."
I believe one of the mistakes we made was thinking 'remembering the Sabbath' meant going to church. But the Sabbath is based on the Genesis story, where God worked six days and on the seventh he "rested."
While the Jews, in particular, still worship on the seventh day of the week, modern Christians began to meet on the first day of the week - Sunday - because we see that as the day of Christ's resurrection.
And if you look at Romans 14, Paul seems to be saying it doesn't matter what day you worship, as long as you set aside one day to honor God.
So what could this commandment mean to us, today?
Hebrews 4 talks about the Sabbath in two ways: one, in a sense that we no longer try to earn our eternal rest in God, but also that God wanted the Hebrews to set aside a day for rest from our labor, just as God set aside a day to rest after creating the world.
That was radical for a culture that lived by field and flock. Taking a true day off meant trusting that your field and flock would still be there when you came back to work, that nothing bad would happen - the crops wouldn't die or get eaten, the flocks wouldn't wander off or get eaten.
In short, it forced the children of Israel to trust God to take care of them one day every week. It meant putting their faith in God that He would look after everything that needed to be done for that one day, as if God were saying, "Trust me. I can handle this. You can get back to it tomorrow."
"Holy'' means set apart. The Sabbath was set aside because it was 'set apart' from the other six days by the absense of work, not the presence of worship. Actually, we should worship every day, in everything we do, not just on Sunday (or Saturday).
The principal of the Sabbath remains true. What that means is, for those of us that refuse to take a day off, that God wants us to stop. Trust God that nothing is so important that we can't leave it to Him to take care of for one day.
And if you don't have time to do that, what are you saying? That God is not really big enough or trustworthy enough to take care of your work for one day?
If we do that, then we violate the first three Commandments: We have made work our God; we justify it with the idea that God created us to work and is honored by our doing good work; and we use God's name in vain to justify what we're doing.
A long time ago, in the time of the Reformation, we Protestants adopted a great work ethic that said we don't work to get rich or out of competition or for our own glory, but we work for God's glory. We work hard at whatever we do to honor God, not ourselves.
Unfortunately, we began to work so hard that we forgot that while we work for God's glory, we also give Him glory by not working and saying we trust Him to handle things while we rest and enjoy family and friends and recharge our batteries.
Unfortunately, it's a lot easier said than done. I have to force myself not to work.
One more example of how we take something good that God created - work - and distort it.
I'd like to take a day off from that, too.
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