Make it Meaningful

Easter.

My favorite holiday.

So much to celebrate because so much has been redeemed in Christ!

As our children get older we try to make each day and even our holidays meaningful. We realize how much our culture has commercialized these sacred days and we buy into it!

Seriously, what does a bunny and marshmallow peeps have to do with Easter?  How did there come to be a rabbit who delivers eggs??  Rabbits don't even lay eggs?  It seriously just cracks. me. up.

Now, please don't roll your eyes and stop reading!

We don't ditch everything.  Maybe we should, but we don't. But, we are learning to try to keep the main the main thing.  I want to share how we will celebrate Holy Week this year, but before I do I just want to encourage you to make your children's Easter baskets meaningful.

Do your children wake up to a basket full of gifts and goodies?? And then later go hunting for eggs filled with refined sugars?  Mine have to, but not this year. We are going to hunt Easter eggs with neighborhood kids and ingest some sugar, but when they wake up on Easter morning their baskets will not be filled.  Their baskets will be empty except for plastic eggs filled with a slip of paper.  That slip of paper will have a list of the things that we bought for others in Romania who are in desperate need of food to survive!  Not thrive, but merely survive!

My challenge to you is to take the money that you would spend on chocolate rabbits and marshmallow peeps and use it to purchase some garden seeds, fruit trees and baby chicks for families who are in true need! Your children are NOT missing out.

They are gaining...

a better understanding of the needs in our world

a better understanding of "it is better to give than to receive"

a better understanding of love!

Chicks= $1.50 each
Chicks provide eggs for families to eat and then later, chicken!

Fruit trees= $7 each
When we were there and got to deliver these trees the people ran to their tiny backyards and planted them immediately!! They will take care of their trees and have nutritious fruit for years to come.

Garden Seeds= .90cents a pack
They plant their gardens the day they are delivered and it provides food for their families in the summer and fall months

I wish you could be there to see their faces when they get these gifts.  I wish I could be there. It is priceless!

Here is the link: http://www.beliefinmotion.org/tp60/Application.asp?app=Store&ID=296860

If you would like to purchase any of these things and then write that on some paper for your child's Easter basket it would mean so much to the Romanian people. Your children will learn so much from it.

Don't our children get so much?  It seems every month there is a holiday and so much junk in the stores for us to buy for our children.

We need to start living counter culture and fight against consumerism! It is so hard, but let's begin praying for how we can live differently and celebrate Christ meaningfully!

More to come on Holy Week later....