Preparing for Easter

I love Christmas.  One of the things I love most is that it is celebrated for an entire month.  I love the time of preparation and the focus on Christ’s birth.

But without Easter, Christmas truly is meaningless.  As awesome as it is that God sent his only Son to earth, it is only the first part of the story.  His death on the cross for our sins and the fact that he rose from the dead 3 days later is what gives not just this story, but every life story purpose and meaning. 

And yet it seems Easter gets so little of our focus.  Sure there are Easter baskets and egg hunts, and egg dying and beautiful spring dresses (none of which have anything to do with the true meaning of Easter) but all of that takes place pretty much on Easter. 

I don’t see much preparation and focus for Easter like I do for Christmas.

This year I am going to try to be intentional and spend focused time as a family preparing our hearts for Easter.   I want to carve out some time each week to bring out focus on the cross and on His resurrection.  

So, I’ve done some planning.  I’ve pulled out the Easter board books from the overstuffed bookshelf in the kids room, and plan to set them out in the living room in a basket for the kids to look at and for us to read to them over the next month. 

I am planning one craft a week for the entire month of March that focuses on Easter.  My hope is to make things we can then use as decorations around the house.  I’m going to do a paper mosaic of the cross with the kids to hang on our wall the first week, “some stained glass” (tissue paper) window hangings for week two, and I am still hunting down an idea for week 3 (any suggestions?) For week 4, I bought these coloring books from CBD.com (at $1.49 each, I got one for each kid) and we are going to work that week on coloring in the pictures and retelling the story.  And on the week of Easter we are going to make resurrection cookies.   I also bought this book which has some mazes, connect the dots, and other paper projects we can work on throughout the month.

I have a set of resurrection eggs, which I have used in the past, but not really.  I haven’t gone through them day by day with the kids like they are intended.  This year, I have it on the calendar.  We will start on March 24th and do one egg each day, thus retelling the Easter story for 12 days leading up to Easter. 

By Good Friday, I hope that our family will be prepared to truly worship and grieve our sins at the Good Friday service at our church that evening.  It is my favorite worship service of the year, as it is such a precious time of meditation and reflection of Christ’s death on the cross, but in such an intimate and personal way.  Saturday we will most likely have an Easter egg hunt with both sets of grandparents and dye eggs with them as well.  (It’s become a sort of tradition here to do that on Sat with the grands and it always a ton of fun).  In my opinion there is nothing wrong with Easter eggs, it’s just not what it is all about.  And Sunday, we will worship our Lord together as a family at our church as we celebrate His resurrection. 

It is my prayer that by making Easter a month long celebration, we can all more fully internalize the true meaning of not only Easter, but of our life.  We were created to bring glory to God and without comprehending the depth of our sin, the sacrifice of the cross, and Christ’s conquer of death as he rose from the dead, we can’t truly bring Him glory. 

My prayer for my family this Easter is taken from Ephesians 3:16-18.

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Do you have any Easter traditions, crafts, ideas, you’d like to share?  Please share in the comments below.  I am always looking for new ideas to incorporate here at the circus and would LOVE to hear from you!