Did the apostle Paul take vacations?

What Paul’s lifestyle says about our calling to both work and rest

A glimpse of the verdant rainforest at Pacific Rim National Park Reserve on Vancouver Island, Canada. We camped there in 2023, but we could not get a reservation there for 2026. And no, it wasn’t because of anti-American bias.

One of my first jobs was as editorial assistant for a denominational office. My main responsibility was to produce one newspaper or newsletter per month. I was paid to work 35 hours a week, but because of my productivity and typing speed, I could complete my assigned tasks in 20 hours a week. To reduce my boredom, I frequently helped other staff with their tasks.

My boss wasn’t any busier than me. I remember the day when I saw him sitting at his desk and planning his summer vacation. I was sad to see what church members’ contributions were paying for. I vowed that I would never lose my integrity to the point of doing personal work on office time.

Forty years have passed. My career has floundered, my idealism has waned, and I often take daytime breaks to plan my July vacation.

Granted, I’m not misusing work time, since I don’t have a job. But I often wonder: does God want us to spend so much time and money on pleasure and self-indulgence?

The New Testament contains no record of Jesus or the apostles taking a vacation. In fact, their calling in life brought substantial misery with it, including Paul’s long series of hardships and persecutions (2 Corinthians 11:23–28), and sometimes ended in brutal, unjust deaths.

But on the other hand, Jesus seems to have endorsed parties and celebrations (John 2:2–8 at the wedding in Cana; Luke 19:5 with Zacchaeus; Luke 15:22–24 in his story of the prodigal son).

Paul was a compulsive missionary, determined to take the gospel to the known world. But the New Testament offers various hints that he also found time for rest and relaxation. In Acts 17:23, he tells us that he had time to walk through Athens, observing its objects of worship. He spent two years in Ephesus (Acts 19:10), working pretty much every day (19:9) but also building tender friendships (20:37–38). His missionary journeys included pleasant sea travels (when he wasn’t getting shipwrecked). And we can presume that he generally rested on the sabbath.

We should offer all our time to God, acknowledging that he has the right to direct how we use it. But we should also recognize that going without rest or relaxation for an extended period leads to burnout, which only makes us less effective.

During my 17 days in Burundi last fall. I never took a day off. I had a rewarding experience, but also a very tiring one. If I were doing it again, I would reserve one day off in the middle for rest and sightseeing. (Burundi is not a great place for tourism, but walking in the lush rural hills was wonderfully refreshing.)

When we had young children, our approach to rest changed considerably. Long vacations and quiet getaways were no longer possible. We rarely paid for childcare and had no relatives nearby to help. But we could still schedule refreshing experiences that the whole family enjoyed, such as campouts, playgrounds, science museums, train museums, or swimming pools.

Most of these activities were low-cost. The playgrounds were free. We purchased an annual membership for the science museum, making the cost per trip quite low. When our son asked to go to a professional US football game, I told him the tickets were too expensive, but I instead took him to a local college game for a small fraction of the professional game price.

Now that our children have left home, we typically take three weeks for summer travel. Camping keeps our costs down, and thanks to the Internet, I still work while traveling. But most importantly, we do not treat these weeks as a vacation from serving God. We seek to remain attentive to the divine appointments, whether planned or unplanned by us, that God has envisioned for us along the way. And we contemplate what God is calling us to do after we return home. No faithful Christian should ever take time off from being an ambassador for Christ.