Celebration Weekend

I feel as though I should write something, given that it is Easter weekend! I am just now, as an adult, learning to appreciate what Easter really is. As a child, Easter was about wearing a pastel or white colored fluffy organdy dress with itchy tights that had little bunnies or chicks embroidered all over them and a new pair of white patent leather dress shoes that were being worn for the first time of the year. It was about getting a pretty little basket that had some plastic eggs filled with candy and change, and then running through the yard with my sisters finding the real eggs we had dyed the day before. After the exhaustive hunt for the eggs and the chocolate bunny, my mom would make us wash off, pack us in the car to head to church. When we got home we would sit at the table to eat a family lunch of ham, green beans, and deviled eggs that were made with the eggs we hunted that morning. I didn't ever really get that Easter was about anything much more than all of the (out of the ordinary) stuff that we did that day.

Over the years, my view of Easter has changed a bit. It really happened a few years ago, though. I was a live-in nanny for a family where the father was an atheist and the mother had been exposed to Christianity but didn't really think it was for her. I frequently had to work on the weekends. When I first started, I told her that I wouldn't work Sundays unless I could take the children with me to church. She agreed. She was happy to let them go with me and they really enjoyed it. Even on the Sundays that I wasn't working, they would go with me. The children loved going to church and loved learning about Jesus and the Bible. Their mom saw this and got into it. For Easter that year, she said that she wanted me to help her. Instead of just putting money and candy in plastic eggs and hiding them, she wanted me to help her go through the Bible and find verses that she could print out and hide in the eggs to encourage her children in their new-found passion!

At first, it was lost on me. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was a great idea! I loved the idea of encouraging children with scripture! And I though it was a neat way to get beyond some of the commercialism that has become the focal point of this Holy-day. But I also thought "why wait until Easter to give them scripture...what makes that day any more important than today to live it out?" I didn't get it! Easter is the day that Jesus ROSE!!!! That is something that the world knows we as Christians celebrate! They know that Easter is important for that reason; something I was taking for granted! She wanted it to be that day because to her, that was the day that counted. THAT was the day that mattered!

My theology about Easter changed quite a bit that day...and continued to! To finish the story out, the next year I was working for and living with another family. The week before Easter, I got a call from the family I had previously lived with and they asked if they could come to church with me...the WHOLE family; father, mother, and all three children! It brought so much joy to me that I still tear up when I think about it! I can't tell you how special it was to me to be sitting in church with that family, who I love so much!

So, when I think about Easter, I don't really think about the eggs and baskets and pretty white dresses anymore. I think about the faces of the people I love who have yet to know the truth of what Jesus has done for them and just how much he really loves them! I think about my father. I think about my friend, Michael. I think about the families that I have lived with and loved who are not followers of Christ. I am undone by the vast amount of love that God has; that I know he has been able to forgive and wash away my many sins and love me despite all of my failures! He loves us! He cries out for humanity and I ask that he would give me but a taste of his heart for the lost! I pray that somehow I can bring grace and love to my friends and family and that my heart can become more and more a reflection of my precious Jesus!

Happy Easter to all of you! May you be blessed!