I’m now six weeks post-sabbatical, and I have come to realize an important truth: You are who you are wherever you are.
If you are a negative person at home, you will most likely be a negative person at work. If you are not content at home, you probably will not be content even while sitting poolside on vacation. You may experience initial moments of contentment as you enjoy the sunshine and sip your favorite beverage, but before long, the real you begins to emerge. You tried to leave your discontent at home, but somehow it slipped into your luggage and resurfaced when you least expected it.
If you are married, you know this to be true: You take your marriage with you. If you linger in the darkroom of anger at home, that same darkness will follow you to the hotel. Arguing, yelling, and fighting do not automatically stop when we pull out of the driveway in our minivan and head to Florida.
In his 1841 essay “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.”
Waiting until we reach a particular destination to be happy is a mistake. One of life’s most important discoveries is learning to find joy in the journey. The arrival myth tells us that we will somehow become different people and stumble upon happiness when we are on vacation, enjoying a sabbatical, taking a weekend getaway, or arriving at whatever “there” may be for us—as long as it is not our current “here.”
Now apply this truth to the Christian life. Will heaven be remarkable, indescribable, and beyond our wildest imagination? Absolutely. Yet throughout the Gospels, Jesus makes it clear that His kingdom begins now—in this life, on this planet, wherever we live, work, or attend school. That is why we pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
God’s kingdom work reshapes both who we are and how we think so that we increasingly become people filled with grace, keeping in step with the Spirit and bearing His fruit wherever we are.
This is how Brother Lawrence, the famous seventeenth-century Carmelite monk, was able to write, “The time of business for me does not differ with my time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees in the cathedral” (The Practice of the Presence of God).
So, the pressing question is not merely, Where are you going? It is, Who are you becoming?
If we are in Christ, we are becoming more like Christ. We are becoming a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), and we are being conformed to the image of God’s Son (Romans 8:29).
This process of sanctification leads us into a joy-filled life wherever we may be—whether relaxing on a beach or working in a cubicle, whether I am sitting at my desk writing these words or hiking Machu Picchu while on sabbatical. The scenery may change, but lasting joy comes from allowing Christ to transform the person we bring with us wherever we go.
