Easter Reflections

47 days. That's how long the season of Lent is.

As a family, we spent 47 days doing two of the most incredible things to prepare our hearts for Easter.

The first was to draw a name of a person, family or place and to pray for them. We would place their name on a flower and glue it to the cross in our dining room. One of the most incredible sights was to see the cross "beautify" as Easter approached. This was by far, Joel's favorite activity. Often we would sit down for dinner, hold hands in anticipation of our nightly prayer, only to have Joel remind us that we forgot to pull a name to put on the cross. We would always stop, pull the name, pray for the person(s) and put their flower on the cross. It was a beautiful time of reflection.

It was a way for us to pray for people that we love but don't often pray for. It was neat to see how certain names were pulled on days that a certain family needed prayer (God's providence perhaps?).

It caused me to pause throughout the day, say a quick prayer for a name that caught my eye, or the name we pulled for that day, before I continued on with my daily activities.

It helped Joel be mindful of others. He would pray for the "person of the day" during his nightly prayers. Or caused him to ask about who that person is (eg. friends from afar that he hasn't met) and what their needs are.

Joel would play a game where he would ask, "Where's ______?" Inevitably, he knew exactly where their name was on the cross, but would have us guess anyway.  Often, this game would cause us to remember people whom we'd already prayed for and pray for them again.

Sometimes, Joel would ask to pray for a certain person. Inevitably, he would always pull that person's name out. Every. Single. Time.

The second thing we did over the Lenten season, was an activity a day. It could be as basic as reading an Easter story, or a complex craft. The point was to introduce the Easter story to the boys and help them learn the basic points of the story.

I hate to admit it, but we definitely read an Easter story more often than I would have liked. But I went into this season with Grace, because life happens. Needless to say, Joel has the Easter story book memorized. He would recite the book, word for word, to us.

But when we did do activities, they were amazing. We painted, glued, coloured and reenacted. One of my favorite memories, was making palm branches with Joel, Micah and their friend Anaya. We used their hand prints to make palm branches attached to Popsicle sticks. We sang Hosanna, while parading around the house waving our palm branches. We then sat down to reenact it with our play animals. With our palm branches on the ground, we added a leopard as our donkey. A Kleenex was added to the leopard's back, to act as cloaks.  A rubber duck, took the place of Jesus, and various other animals played the crowd. The duck (Jesus) kept falling off the leopard (donkey), so Joel made the duck walk alongside the leopard. We sang Hosanna the entire time. It was such a blessed time for me.

Actually, the reenactments were definitely the highlight for me. We participated in our own version of Resurrection eggs. Twelve eggs, each filled with a symbol of Easter. A leaf, representing the palm branches and the Triumphant entry. Some dice that represented the casting of lots for Jesus' clothes. A cracker representing Christ's body during the Last supper. By far, the best one for me was the three nails. I had the kids take a nail each (luckily, we had a friend for this activity) and poke it into the palm of their hand. "Pointy! Sharp! Ow!" were the words I heard from their mouths. Same when we held a bramble bush  representing the crown of thorns. I asked them to imagine the "crown of thorns" in their head. "I don't like it. That's not very nice. Ow!" Those were the responses the kids gave me. For some reason, this activity really made the story come alive for me. So often, I think, we gloss over the cruelness of Jesus' death. It was awful. But those little tastes of pain were enough to symbolize the agony that Christ went through for us.

We reenacted the washing of the disciples feet, with each one of us taking turns to wash another family members feet. We had the Last supper, complete with pita bread and juice. Humbling times and a great time of conversation with the little boys. Could you imagine your best friend, selling you out for money? Could you imagine washing your friends dirty feet? Ones that had spent all day in the dirt?

The conversations, the crafts, the reenactments, the story readings all contributed to a wonderful Easter for us. Our focus was on Christ and his story. 47 days of prayer. 40 days of activities. 1 Blessed event. Numerous great memories.