I love Easter. My childhood is filled with so many happy Easter Mornings of spending the morning with my family and feeling the joy and love of my Savior. Now that I'm grown and have a family of my own I want to ensure my children know the true reason we celebrate Easter. We still do Easter baskets filled with goodies from the Easter Bunny, but our focus is always on Jesus Christ and His great sacrifice for each of us. Earlier this month I had asked my youngest why we celebrate Easter. We had discussed our reasons as a family before and I was curious to see how much of that discussion was absorbed by my wee little 4 year old. Her response was, "To get candy?" I had to resist a face-palm. Since then I have made it a point to talk about Jesus and his Atoning Sacrifice as often as possible.
It wasn't until I was out Easter shopping that an idea came to me. I wanted to start a new tradition with my family, something that would help us to remember Christ, not just on Easter, but through out the year. It was then I recalled my own teaching words to my children as we had discussed why we celebrate Christ's resurrection and how it related to spring. I had told my children that the earth and its plants seem to die during the cold winter months, but in spring time they come back to life; in this way spring is symbolic of Christ and His Resurrection. At this recollection I made a detour from the candy aisle and headed for the gardening section. I scanned the seed display and chose a packet of flower seeds.
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I then grabbed a big bag of potting soil and headed for the check out, more excited with my seeds and dirt than I was about the candy and goodies piled in my cart.
The next morning as my girls got ready for school I asked them, yet again, why we celebrate Easter. This time both my girls responded by telling me the same things I had tried to instill in them in all our previous discussions. My heart swelled a little, and I was grateful my words were finally sticking. My girls were so excited when I told them about the seeds and how we would plant them the day before Easter and watch for the little flowers to grow and bloom. I told them that these flowers would be a reminder to us all year about how Jesus, like the flowers in spring, came back to life.
So yesterday we planted out tiny seeds.
So let's remember why we celebrate, and always remember Him, Jesus Christ our Savior.
What a wonderful tradition! I love how so many things in nature are symbols of gospel principles. New life is definitely one of them. :-) Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteWhen I was little I remember getting spoilt at Easter, I don't remember having egg hunts though although when my girls were little we would have egg hunts and the Easter Bunny would right on the eggs the first initial of the childs name so they knew who owned what.
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