Our Imperfectly Perfect Spring Break, Part 2
This is the second part of a three-part series, reflecting on God’s faithfulness 365 days a year.
Back to the daily grind, Spring Break seems like eons ago. With only peeling, flaky skin on our bodies and sand wedged in our sandals to remind us that yes, we really were in a different world—one defined by water and sand—and more sun and warmth than our teetering between winter and spring region, we’re “back to normal” life.
Full-steam ahead in our schedules, work, bills, school, meetings, volunteering, child-care, and meal planning, we long for our vacation days. Though definitely not an apples-to-apples situation, we’re like the Israelites who yearned for their previous food supply, but seemingly completely forgot about the slavery.[1] We similarly dream “If only we could go back because vacation was perfect in every way, right?” Our pictures tell the story of ice cream cones (so much ice cream), walking the beach with a grandchild or sibling, no schedules to be ruled by, and just ‘round the clock togetherness.
What the camera roll doesn’t show is the travel fatigue, the out of rhythm effects on our bodies, the favorite pillow left at home, or the sickness that found an easy target pathway in multiple bodies occupying close quarters. As we scroll through the memories, there’s this other story to be held, the reality that even on vacation, as long as we’re this side of heaven, we live in a post-fall world. No matter what we yearn to go back to—vacation, another season, healthier bodies, relatives long-gone— there were and are and will be trials and suffering.
In this Holy Week, may we remember that only Jesus can and has and will set it all straight.
We saw him and we see him . . .
In Sickness and in Health
Tucked in-between the photos brimming with smiles, sand buckets, shovels, and sunscreen are the reminders of the contagion that wormed its way through our family vacation. Each day’s pictures reveal the “victim of the day” and the severity of their illness based on paleness-factor and if they were curled up, missing from the dinner table, flat out, or upright.
Sick throughout the night, our normally energetic children, now appetite-less and listless on laps, had succumbed to the virus and bacteria that dared make its way into our “perfectly planned” get-a-way. The reality is: We can never, this side of earth, “Get Away” from the suffering and hardships of this life.
If our current-day hardships create amnesia to yesterday’s trials, we can’t run back to yesterday or away from today, BUT, we CAN run TO Him—our “Stronghold.” Nahum 1:7 reminds us “The Lord is good, a stronghold in a day of distress; he cares for those who take refuge in him” (CSB).
Jesus is the ONLY ONE worth running to—the ONLY ONE who will faithfully, always hold us strongly. He is our past, present, and future “hope” (Hebrews 6:18-19, CSB). Anyone or anything else we set our hope in will fall short of lasting satisfaction. The vacation is temporary, the “perfect” spouse or boyfriend can’t redeem and save us, and the short-lived pleasure won’t eradicate adversity or worries.
Jesus is “the bread of life,” the ONE who will sustain us and meet our deepest need and hunger. (John 6:35, NIV). It’s only upon meeting HIM and fully giving ourselves to Him, that we won’t need to run back to another time or away from today—only to. To Him. Then permanently fixated “In Him” (Acts 17:28, CSB, emphasis mine).
In this Holy Week, Jesus “finished” His work on our behalf so that we, too, can finish well (John 19:28-30, CSB). Philippians 3:13b-14 reminds us to move forward: “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (NIV).
As we look through pictures of last weekend, the trip with the grandkids, last summer, or the special event, may we reminisce on the Lord—the God who created the beautiful moment, the beautiful landscape, the beautiful kids—the “GOOD SHEPHERD” who gave his life for us (John 10:11, ESV, caps mine). He has seen us through and will see us through this fallen world to the end.
In sickness or in health, on vacation or at home, on Monday morning or Friday evening, on the death bed or in the nursery, . . .
May we look not back, not away from, but TO.
To the Risen Savior.
“But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’” (1 Cor. 2:9, ESV).
[1] Exodus 16:1-3