Well, we are back from our Alaskan cruise. What a great vacation. A cruise ship offers rest and relaxation, the beauties and sublimities of nature, the benefits of civilization, learning interesting things, fine food and drink, entertainment (shows, live music, movies), time to read for sheer pleasure, quality and quantity time with whomever you are traveling with (in my case, my wonderful wife of 40 years). You can make a vacation of any one of those, but a leisurely cruise gives you all of them. We had a week of utter enjoyment. So why, after a week, was I so ready for it to end?
One might say that I need to be productive and all that. But I really believe this is a fault. St. Augustine said that our hearts are restless until they find rest in God. Restlessness is surely a function of the Fall. In Heaven we will rest from our labors. We will enjoy a permanent vacation, with pleasures forevermore. We cannot even conceive of what that kind of existence would be like. And the foretastes we might have of that on earth–such as a vacation–can be hard for us to handle for very long.
What strange beings we are!
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