I wanted to continue staff devotions over Spring Break, but… last week, no this month, well probably the last year has left me drained physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. A school year has never left me so drained. I’m always surrounded by students with struggles and challenges, but this year it’s so many kids in literal crisis, dealing with issues no child should face, issues robbing them of childhood itself. It’s overwhelming, it’s out of control, it’s exhausting and very worst of all I CAN’T FIX IT!!! It isn’t going to be resolved this period, this day, this week or even this year. The load is heavy, I’m beginning to feel crushed, overwhelmed and defeated. To add to this overwhelming blow, there are family crises, the devastating loss of my cousin to COVID, the toll of confinement on the immunologically fragile, issues at work that shake the very foundation of who you are and who you thought you’d be professionally. “Happy Spring Break” falls hard on a broken exhausted soul.
Then today, I read Day 25 of Journey to the Cross and realized it is no accident that our Spring Break falls smack dab in the middle of Lent. It occurred to me as I read Dr. Tripp’s words, “The season of Lent is about offering yourself to God in new and deeper ways. It’s about submission and deeper devotion.” I realize in my life I can’t fix my students, I can’t make life easier for my biological children, I can’t extinguish the hurt of my friends and family. I CAN’T DO IT–therefore I must surrender to one who can, who knows, who sees. So I broke down the paragraph on page 144 about Lent and replaced it with Spring Break. So what if it looked like this:
- Spring break is offering yourself to God in new or deeper ways.
- Spring break is about submission and deeper devotion.
- Spring break is about mourning the ways your heart has wondered.
- Spring break is about confessing the hold the world still has on you or the places you’ve succumbed to temptation’s draw.
- Spring break is about identifying places in the heart where you need to give yourself more fully to God.
- Spring break is important because we need to examine our hearts, our lives, our relationships, and our daily decisions to see where God is calling you to give something up or take something up in devotion to him.
- Spring break is about recommitting to self-sacrifice as we pursue the one who made the ultimate sacrifice for us.
- Spring break isn’t a formal season or temporary escape from reality, but rather an opportunity to address things in your life that need to be addressed but that get lost in the busyness and distraction of everything else you’re doing.
- Spring break is not about you, what you are doing or committing to God, but about what he has done and is doing for you.
My prayer for you is that regardless of where Spring Break takes you this year, whether it is the exhilaration of the trip of a lifetime or the drudgery of what continues to burden and pull us down, may you know afresh: “It is God’s generosity that is primary and transformative, not ours. We love because he first loved us. We give because he first gave to us. We lay down our lives because he first laid down his. We are willing to suffer for his sake because he first suffered for us. We obey because in his obedience we are given hope. We fight temptation because he fought it and defeated it on our behalf. We are willing to humble ourselves and serve because he left the splendor of eternity, humbled himself, and served up to and through the point of death…He is the ultimate giver. No matter how great our sacrifices or how much we give, we will never give to him the magnitude of what he has given us” (p 145).
Spring Break 2021 — may you be a breathe of fresh air to the tired and weary world.
the psv 