Eagerly Awaiting EASTER!

I recently read a portion of Noel Piper's book, Treasuring God in our Traditions and was inspired to do more with the girls in anticipation of Easter. We count down a full month before Christmas, but we often don't do anything for Easter until the day of (maybe an egg hunt the day before-ha!) I'm not at all opposed to having an Easter Egg hunt. It's all good fun.

But as my kids grow up, I want to spend more time talking about the gospel ~the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. These are some of the core components of our faith.

 

I decided to do a combination of things that I have heard and read. Noel shares the great idea of doing Lenten Lights with your children. It's basically a series of small devotionals using candles. If you have older children, she suggests doing a devotional each Sunday of lent, but if you have younger children and want to do daily devotionals during Holy Week, she suggests starting on the Saturday before Palm Sunday and doing a devotional each night.

This is her description of the candles. I love it!

The Symbolism of the Seven Candles

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). But for a while it seemed as if the darkness was overcoming—for a long while.

Your seven candles symbolize the Light of the World—the Light that was God’s glory and that illuminated God for us—the Light that, in the end, seemed to have been darkened. As we move through the season preceding Easter, the candles are snuffed out one by one, until all are dark on Good Friday, when Jesus died and the earth was covered with shadow. Darkness apparently had won. The Light of the World had been extinguished. It was finished.

But NO! Easter brings resurrection! Life! Return from death! The Light has won and all the candles burn as we praise him—the Light of the World, the Bright Morning Star, the Glory of God.

I just used birthday candles that I stuck into Styrofoam because it's all I had ;) 

We are basically going to do the candles along with resurrection eggs since the kids are so little. I'll probably step it up to the full devotional next year. But I like the visual of the eggs for a 2 and a 4 year old. 

On the blog Sugar Lander, I found this simple post on DYI Resurrection Eggs. Thank you Casey!

Here's Casey's picture of hers.

I have 10 eggs and 9 candles and only 9 days until Easter, so I did two eggs on the first night. It's as flexible as you want it to be. So honestly start whenever you are able - even if its just a few days before Easter. Something is better than nothing, right?!

The girls loved seeing what was inside!

Tim explaining the story of Easter.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead... 

1 Peter 1:3