I realise that I have become seriously un-cool. Talking with a group of children at the end of term about the prospect of long school holidays and lazy days of doing nothing much, I found myself spontaneously bursting into song. ‘We’re all going on a summer holiday,’ I sang breezily. Aside from the sheer embarrassment of having their vicar singing to them in the street, the children looked genuinely puzzled. ‘You know the song,’ I said, ‘Cliff Richard?’ ‘Who is Cliff Richard?’ asked a wide-eyed nine-year old. What humiliation.

The word holiday, before it was ever attached to seaside jaunts or cheap flights from Stansted, literally meant a ‘holy-day’. It marked a saint’s day in the calendar of the medieval Church which required obligatory attendance at mass. The bonus of this system was not only that people said their prayers on a regular basis and in so doing got relief from the drudgery of life, but it also gave them an excuse to have a bit of a party.

Nowadays we’ve lost the link between holidays and holiness. We’ve imprisoned holiness in shrines and stained glass windows. But there is a spiritual link we need to reclaim because it is fundamental to human flourishing.

In the Bible the Hebrew word for holy, qadosh, is first applied not to a place or building, such as the temple in Jerusalem; nor to a person such as a saint, but instead to time. In the Book of Genesis we read, ‘And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation’ (Genesis 2.3). In the Bible holiness is spoken of first and foremost in relation to how we use time. What is more, it is not about work, but rest. We grow in holiness by learning to let go and to rest. Why? because when we do that we become more ourselves, and when we are more ourselves, God is able the better to draw close to us.

God is not interested in exhausted, burnt-out people. This summer, whether you are going away or staying in London, don’t miss the opportunity simply to rest. Put your feet up, let go and let God work his healing touch in your life.