Winter Break: Be. Engage. Do.
Inspired by Ephesians 5:14-16, which calls us to wake up and make the best use of our time, the senior class decided that this winter break we’d put it to practice, and what better way to do so than breaking out of the holiday laze/slump and dedicating our time to completing some goals that had gotten buried under the weight of the fall semester? In the past, we all had personal challenges that we made to ourselves, like reading different Christian novels, the Bible, and engaging our family members in spiritual conversation, but they never lasted for very long due to faded motivation and lack of accountability. Knowing this, the senior class came up with a new challenge that would help us through this, titled: ‘Get Off Your B.E.D.’
14 for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says,
“Awake, O sleeper,
and arise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.”
15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
We started off by defining what we hoped to achieve by the end of the winter break, to which we found that we had coinciding goals. Though they were easy to make, we knew from past experience that it would be hard to keep up on our own, especially because of the distance between us. To safeguard against this, we had one condition: everyday or so, we send an update about what we read, spent the day, or even how we weren’t productive at all to keep one another accountable and updated on how break is going.
Though it was easy to talk about successes in reaching our goals, we also talked some failures that we faced (ex. Getting too comfortable at home, feeling too lazy to read, etc.). It was hard to talk about them at first, but it became a humbling experience as we got to see that we weren’t alone in our struggles and we didn’t have to move forward shouldering the burden on our own. As a group, we encouraged, prayed for, and gave advice to one another that helped us move past the momentary failure to being strengthened in our commitments to keep pursuing our goals.
From this experience, we were able to keep each other accountable and let each other know that we were there for them. When the seniors were asked whether they would do it again, here’s what they thought:
““It was also really nice to hear how other people were doing & praying for them through requests. [I’m] Just thankful or an outlet to be honest.”
“Overall, I would definitely do it again because it helped me spur me to grow spiritually over break instead of just being lazy the entire time.”
“I really enjoyed this challenge and want to extend it to the semester!”
“I’m glad we did it! Maybe we can reuse the chat another time and more people can join in”
Contributed By: Stephanie