Remembering Easter

It always seems so easy to prepare for and remember the reason we celebrate Christmas.  It is fun to celebrate the birth of our Savior, but His death was gruesome and graphic.  It's hard to talk about death, especially with kids.  However, Paul reminds us that if Christ had no been raised from the dead our faith is in vain (1 Corinthians 15:14). 
I want Easter to be a special time of year for our family.  I want our boys to know that without Easter we have NO faith!  It is what sets us apart from all others.  So this year thanks to a good friend that already had worked out a daily reading plan, we did more of an advent (similar to the Resurrection eggs) the two weeks before Easter. 

So we washed each other's feet after walking through shaving cream.

We remembered that Jesus took the nails in His hands and shed His blood for us!  This one brought Mom to tears.  Making those marks on their little hands was a very visible reminder to me.  I cannot save my boys.  I cannot make them love Jesus, but His sacrifice was for them too.  He did, what I could never do for them, paid their penalty for sin and death so that they too could spend an eternity knowing and loving Him more.

On Good Friday, we made Jesus' tomb (out of paper plates), wrapped Jesus in His burial clothes (a Kleenex), placed Jesus inside, rolled the stone (brown construction paper) in front, and placed the soldiers in front to guard it.  As boys are boys, they were pumped about playing with the soldiers. 

Then on Easter morning, the tomb looked different.  We celebrated that Jesus was no longer in the tomb, but He was ALIVE!!

I am eager to watch all three of the boys' grow in their understanding of what Easter really means.