[Darris McNeely] How much vacation time is in your account? If you're like me, it just banks up, stays there, you're busy, we're working but vacations are an important part of our life. Typically two, three, four, sometimes people get five or six weeks of vacation a year. Having the money and perhaps even the ability to use that because of work constraints is a very important thing.

But when you take a vacation, how do you look at it? What does it do for you? And how do you view a vacation? You know, a vacation's kind of a modern construct, kind of like the weekend, but still an important thing. I've known people who work to take a vacation and I've known people who will take a vacation and come back to work rejuvenated, refreshed, and a better employee, a better worker because of the time that they have taken off. But which are you?

There's a parable that Christ spoke, a statement about a servant plowing that I think helps us to understand something about being that profitable servant. So Luke said, Chapter 17 and it begins in verse 7, "Which of you," he says, "having a servant plowing or tending sheep will say to him when he has come in from the field, 'Come at once and sit down to eat?' Or will he not rather say to him, 'Prepare something for my supper and gird yourself, serve me till I have eaten and drunk and afterward you will eat and drink?' Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded?" In other words, do you thank the servant because he did what he was supposed to be doing? Christ said, "I think not. So likewise, when you have done all these things which you are commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.'"

Now, this is a parable, a very small one, that can be full of a number of different applications. It's talking about being a profitable servant and being one of those people who go above and beyond and take the work seriously and apply themselves. And I got to thinking about it, reading it through here recently and how it relates to how we view our job. As I said, I know some who work to take vacation and as soon as they get a few days built up, they take that vacation, they come back, they're the same type of employee, they get a few more days built up and they're off for taking that vacation. It's theirs, they can do with it as they please.

While others got to have to be prodded to take their vacation. A good vacation, and all for vacations, should in a sense help us recreate ourselves. I mean, that's where we get the term "recreation." It's to recreate. We take time off to rest, to rejuvenate to come back and if we follow the biblical example, to be a better servant or employee and to be a profitable one, to be the type of employee that is able to and willing to work a bit of overtime or to go the extra mile, to ask the questions for maybe extra things to do or to take a class on a particular subject or skill that can be applied to the work is the type of servant Jesus is talking about. You don't do only that which you're commanded to do but you go above and beyond and you anticipate and you plan.

And so think about that as we seek to be like Christ and to follow his teachings, work or take a vacation, we need to, but come back a better worker for the time we've taken off as we, like our work, apply ourselves, and seek to become a profitable servant.

That's BT Daily. Join us next time.