Easter is around the corner. If you venture into any store even in this #COVID-19 reality, you’ll still find eggs, bunnies, and jelly beans everywhere you go. It’s definitely a holiday that has been commercialized for children and it’s easy to get caught up in that.

However, Easter is far more than eggs, jelly beans, and a new outfit. As so much of our usual family gatherings has been stripped away from our lives, we are actually even more positioned to make Easter a truly significant personal celebration.

Let’s look at a few ways we can make Easter special for you and for any kids in your life:

Make Easter special for you:

What needs to die in your life? What controls you? Screens? Food? Sugar? Bitterness? Easter is about Jesus’s death on the cross, a death that was needed for new life to be experienced. What do you need to put to death SO THAT you can experience new life in some way?

Where do you need resurrection in your life? Your love for your spouse? Passion for your job? Fresh vision as a parent? Start talking to God now about where you long for resurrection in your life and heart. Pair that longing with what might need to die. For instance, if you long for resurrection in your marriage, your critical spirit may need to be put to death. If you need fresh vision as a parent, your longing that your child be someone other than how God made them to be may need to die.

Read the resurrection story each day. You can find it in Luke 22-24. Ask God what He has for you this Easter as it relates to putting to death the old person and allowing God’s resurrection in your heart.

Make Easter special for your kids:

Read. Pull out a children’s book or children’s Bible that tell’s the story on a child’s level.  Read that regularly in the days leading up to Easter. Read the story right from the Bible, especially if you have older children.  If you use a New International Version (NIV) or another easy to read version, it helps makes the story easier to understand.  The Easter story can be found in several places in the Bible, but a good one to read with kids is Mark chapters 15 and 16.

Enjoy the tradition of decorating eggs together. This is also a wonderful hour or so of time that you have their attention and can weave in the real story behind Easter. Challenge them to decorate an egg or two to represent the Easter story in some way.

Make resurrection eggs. For years we have used plastic eggs and filled them with items and a Bible verse that help tell the Easter story.  We number the eggs with a marker and then allow the kids to open one egg each day in order.  This helps us to tell the Easter story in a creative way.  It is especially beneficial to those kids who best learn with hands-on activities.  Here’s the items:

#9        Cracker                                   Mark 14:22

#8        Three dimes                          Matthew 26:14-15

#7        Thorn                                      Mark 15:17

#6        Two sticks (makes a cross) John 19:16-17

#5        Nail                                         Luke 23:33

#4        White Cloth                          Matthew 27:57-60

#3        Stone                                      Matthew 27:49-60

#2        Cinnamon Sticks                 Mark 16:1

#1        Empty                                    Mark 16:5-6

Attend a virtual Easter service together as a family. Even if we can’t gather as a family to go to a church service together, we can still be reminded of it’s importance by attending an online service. If you don’t have a church you regularly attend, I invite you to my church where you can stream a 9am or 11am service live or participate in a service on demand whenever it works best for you!

Let’s reframe Easter this year by thinking of it differently. Instead of gathering for a meal as a family, let’s thank God for the Last Supper that Jesus had with his friends before he went to the cross for us. Instead of getting a new outfit for Easter, let’s find a new attitude of gratefulness that will make a bigger impact.

What about you? What is something your family does to make Easter come alive?