Anyone who reads this blog regularly probably won't be surprised when I say that our family does not include the Easter Bunny in our Easter celebrations. Our kids do get Easter baskets on Easter (Resurrection) morning. The kids know that Mom and Dad, not the Easter Bunny, fill the baskets. Each child gets a chocolate cross (both the Palmer and Hershey candy companies make these) and several other small items.
Holy Week is one of the busiest times of the year for us. Every year our family puts on a Seder Meal. We usually do this on Maundy Thursday. We attend Good Friday services on Friday evening and then Easter service on Resurrection Sunday. We spend most of the rest of the weekend with our families, enjoying special dinners and time together.
Still, even with all this activity surrounding the time of our Lord's death and resurrection, I have wondered if I could do more to instill the meaning of the Lenten season into my children. As a mother, I'm always looking for new ways to attach something tangible and visible to biblical truths in order for these truths to sink deeper into my children's hearts. In the past, most of our activity concerning the truth that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and then rose again on the third day has been during Holy Week.
The last couple of weeks, however, I've gotten to thinking about how our family's Advent and Christmas preparations are longer in duration than our Lenten and Easter preparations. Our family uses a Jesse Tree in the weeks before Christmas to tell the story of God's Redemption of His people. Wouldn't it be nice to have something similar to the Jesse Tree for the Lenten season? What was only a seed of a thought came into full bloom when I read this woman's blog about how she and her family have an Easter tree to tell the story of Christ's death and resurrection. It's my intention to make one of these trees for our family. Isn't it neat how fellow believers (even those we only know on the internet) can spur us on to greater intimacy with our Lord?
(Thanks to my in-the-flesh friend, Julie, who told me about the above mentioned blog, which has blessed me tremendously.)
1 comment:
Hey! I was thinking of making the same thing. I bought a wire "Easter Tree" today at Goodwill and plan on finding the pictures - maybe not the exact ones by the same artists, but ones appropriate to the lesson. We do not have a color printer and I did not know how nice the paintings would look using a printer anyway. I had hoped to find a book of Christian art and cut it apart. ~Julie
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