Holy Week is Here!

Resurrection garden, source: wearethatfamily.com

Throughout church history, families have joined together to commemorate and celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. No holiday season is more central to our faith or more important to emphasize with the next generation. Too often, however, we forget to create and capture moments at home that could make the holiday more impactful.

This year at Mattis Avenue FMC we're trying something new: distributing a guide to celebrating "Easter @Home" during Holy Week. Since everyone has a home, we created two customized versions, one for adults, and one for families with kids at home. Here is the guide for families. The following pages provide you with an easy-to-implement idea for each day from Palm Sunday to Easter. The goal is to try one ore more of the readings/activities to help focus on the true meaning of Holy Week together- at home. Pick an idea or reading and try one out!

Here is a link to the outside cover of the brochure:

Easter@Home guide, outside

and the inside:

Easter@Home guide, inside

One thing I love about the internet is the abundance of great ideas! Several months ago I found the photo above of a resurrection garden on Pinterest, and ever since then have been excited to make one. The girls and I had fun completing this project together. What a beautiful reminder that He is risen! Full disclosure: ours is sitting on the floor near our patio door so it will get some sunlight, and we're waiting on the grass to grow.  Oh, and one of the girls bumped into one of the little crosses and broke it, so we had to have the somewhat theological discussion of why we really do want three crosses there instead of two. Here's a link to the instructions:
http://wearethatfamily.com/

I tried to include some favorite ideas for celebrating Easter in the guide, but here are a few others that we ran out of room for:

Photo: resurrection rolls from eatatallies.com

Resurrection rolls are not only delicious, but a creative way to share the story and meaning of Easter. You can find the recipe and narrative here:
http://eatatallies.com

My Mattis Avenue friends can attest to the yumminess of these rolls. We made them to serve after our service last week, and they disappeared quickly! Side note: make sure you pick up PLAIN crescent rolls to use in the recipe. After completing one full batch, and wondering what the strange garlicky smell was, I realized I'd bought garlic butter crescent rolls..... definitely NOT the same! Fortunately, my sweet husband took pity on our church family, and rushed out to buy replacements.

My friend Ann found and shared this site and poem for using M&Ms (who doesn't love M&M's?!?) to share "The Sweet Truth of Easter":
http://katiewetherbee.wordpress.com/

I hope that in the busyness of life, you'll find time to slow down over the next few days, and really contemplate and celebrate the true meaning of Easter with your family at home, in addition to the special things your church undoubtedly is doing. Believe me, I know what a challenge carving out this can be! However, faith lived out at home in a meaningful way is so important in passing on truth to the next generation. Maybe some of these ideas will help! Please share- what are your favorite traditions or ideas for passing on your faith to your family at Easter?

The Story Challenge: Is God pulling back?

Don't you love it when you can see God orchestrate tiny details in life to work out according to his purposes? As some of you know, one of my favorite authors is Philip Yancy, and I've shared with you excerpts from his book "Grace Notes" from time to time.

Book Cover, "Grace Notes"

Well, yesterday I came across this reflection titled "Three Questions" and thought it pertinent to our reading of chapter 5 this week, "New Commands and a New Covenant", and want to share it with you. Here are Philip Yancy's words:

     Is God unfair? Is God silent? Is God withdrawn? Exodus and Numbers taught me that quick solutions to those three questions may not solve the underlying problems of disappointment with God. The Israelites, though exposed to the bright, unshaded light of God's presence, were as fickle a people as have ever lived. Ten different times on the melancholy pathless plains of the Sinai they rose up against God. Even at the very border of the Promised Land, with all its bounty stretching out before them, they were still keening for the "good old days" of slavery in Egypt.

     These dismal results may provide insight into why God does not intervene more directly today. Some Christians long for a world well-stocked with miracles and spectacular signs of God's presence. I hear wistful sermons on the parting of the Red Sea and the ten plagues and the daily manna in the wilderness, as if the speakers yearn for God to unleash power like that today. But the follow-the-dots journey of the Israelites should give us pause. Would a burst of miracles nourish faith? Not the kinds of faith God seems interested in, evidently. The Israelites give ample proof that signs may only addict us to signs, not to God.

     True, the Israelites were a primitive people emerging out of slavery. But the biblical accounts have a disturbingly familiar ring to them. The Israelites tended to behave, in Frederick Buechner's phrase, "just like everybody else, only more so." 

     I came away from my study of them both surprised and confused: surprised to learn how little difference it made in people's lives when three major reasons for disappointment with God- unfairness, silence, and hiddenness- were removed; confused by the questions stirred up about God's actions on earth. Has God changed, by pulling back, withdrawing?

It is so interesting to me that God put this very passage from Yancy in my path yesterday to notice and share with you, and yet the subject is contemplating God "pulling back" from signs. Maybe it's a good reminder to me that I need to focus more on him to be mindful of his everyday miracles? How quickly we forget that even the snow gently falling from the sky on a dreary March day is a miracle in and of itself. Every snowflake unique, and yet we trudge on through, grumbling about the mess on our boots!

I'd love to hear your thoughts this week!