A Simple + Sacred Easter
I am desperate to create a home for my children where they know, distinctively, the difference between the things that truly matter and the things that don’t. I don’t always model this well for them, but as they grow up and begin to build their own ideologies and worldviews, I hope they are able to view it all through an eternal lens.
Easter baskets. New flowery dresses and pastel-colored button-ups. Shiny plastic eggs filled with candy. Gold foil-wrapped bunnies.
These are, at face value, very fun, albeit worldly, ways we choose to celebrate Easter. And while my kids will get to experience these little pleasures throughout this next week, my prayer is that the meat of the gospel and the heart of the message don’t get thrown out with the candy wrappers.
So what does it look like to tell the simple and sacred story of Christ amidst a ravenously consumeristic and oversensitized culture? How do we share the beautiful juxtaposition of the heartache and anguish of His death along with the unquenchable joy and hope of the resurrection in a way that is age-appropriate and real and not corny or cartoony or completely overshadowed? These are thoughts I wrestle with every single year. And these are the things I’m doing in response.
my hope is that this coming week will not look so wildly different from any other week to them, because the gospel is a tapestry woven throughout our days.
For our family, it means we talk about the gospel with our kids throughout the year, not just at Easter. We pray with them at the dinner table and before bed each night and when we get in the car. We pray over our school day and try our best to stay attentive to those moments when our kids are hungry and inquisitive, not missing opportunities to dig deeper and answer hard questions.
I’ve shared quite a bit about how we usher in a weekly sabbath with communion, and how we invite our kids into that wildly imperfect, holy process every Friday evening.
For the past several years, we have made a resurrection garden with the boys, using mostly items on hand or from the yard to recreate the scene. On Friday, the stone sits in front of the tomb with Jesus’ body inside. And when my children wake up on Sunday morning, the rock will be rolled aside and the tomb will be empty.
Yes, there will be small Easter baskets for each of the kids (full transparency—I’ve wrestled with this one. But ultimately, gifts are my love language, and I do my best to fill them with a few little items that point to the beauty of creation and exploration—ie: nature journals, rain boots, and books.) We’ll also likely do an Easter egg hunt after church because celebration is multifaceted and there are a million ways we can choose to seize the moments.
But above all, I will fight to create an atmosphere of worship. I will do the work in my own heart to be unrushed and present. I will strive to show my boys what it looks like to prepare my heart for His presence, to prioritize time to reflect and get in the right headspace over time spent putting on makeup and picking out the perfect outfit for church. (And I will do it imperfectly, apologizing when I respond with irritation or miss the mark.)
If our hearts follow our treasure, then my desire is that my children would bear witness to the countless treasures I lay at the feet of Jesus each and every day.
And my hope is that this coming week will not look so wildly different from any other week to them, because the gospel is a tapestry woven throughout our days. It is an aroma that permeates the walls of our home. A song they are well acquainted with and a story they know intimately. It is both the everyday and the once in a lifetime and it is worth all our meager offerings.