New Hopes and Beginnings
As spring breaks, a season of new hopes and beginnings emerge. It comes to no surprise that Christ’s death and Easter/Passover coincide with the spring equinox. This serves as a spiritual reminder of the new hope and beginning one can have through Christ. (II Corinthians 5:17)
My children are grown, but I have fond memories of Easters’ past. At our home, we allowed fun activities such as coloring and hunting Easter eggs, believing in the Easter Bunny, and getting an Easter basket filled with candy with our children when they were small. However, we kept our focus on Easter’s true message, Christ’s death of His shed blood washing our sins away. With His resurrection, He defeated death and lives forever in heaven where we can one day live, too.
There was one Easter, which stands out in my mind the most and that was the year we made the Resurrection Cookies recipe. Have you heard of this? This is a precious hands-on activity for the whole family. Following the Bible verses with each step of the cookie making process was deeply touching and I felt the presences of the Holy Spirit using me to illustrate the importance of Jesus’ death.
Larry Harms, a fellow blogger, wrote an interesting post, “Jesus Christ, the Easter Bunny, and Baskets Full of Colorful Eggs”, which helped me to understand how bunnies and colored eggs came to be connected with Easter. If you’re concerned about the fluff of Easter, then you may want to read this for yourself.
One of the most well-known bashes involving Easter Eggs in the US is the Easter Egg Roll held on our nation’s capital lawn each Easter Monday. This has been a traditional event for 125 years with gatherings of 40,000 visitors. Throughout the country, many cities host Easter Egg hunts and parades commemorating the occasion. It’s a nice time to spend with family.
Of course, it’s common for many local churches to display their own pageantry with gorgeous plays depicting the life of Christ. The church we attended years ago hosted a beautiful Easter program called Living Pictures of Christ. From our experience, this is basically a passion play. A scene opens such as The Last Supper, with all actors frozen like a still picture and then it comes to life before your eyes. This is a beautiful tribute. While surfing the net, I found a presentation on YouTube.
Easter is a personal time to reflect on Christ’s presences in our lives. Last week, read a lovely poem by Susan Anderson called, The Women. This came at such a perfect time with the Easter season approaching and I felt it appropriate to share it with each of you.
Pass your joys in Christ on to the others, just like Kurt Kaiser songs says.
**Shared originally on my first site, Cathy Kennedy’s Blog, in 2011 on April 11th, which I revised making small corrections to grammar, spelling, and broken links in post content.**
