I have always thought there needs to be a bigger celebration at Easter, but I haven't quite figured out what it should be. I've always wondered about Easter egg hunts and Easter baskets. I am definitely not a fan of the Easter bunny. I have a desire to give presents at Easter because it is a time of great celebration, but I also want it to have meaning.
The Easter Un-Basket fixes some of that for me. Some may call it the un-Easter basket, but I don't like that. I don't want any kind of "un" in front of Easter. Here is how we did it.
On Good Friday, we went outside and gathered 5 rocks each. Aria chose the number we gathered. Then we sat on our deck and thought of sins we struggle with and wrote them on our rocks. Aria thought of and wrote her own on her rocks. She was incredibly thoughtful in listing things she really does struggle with instead of random things she knows are wrong, but rarely ever does. It was another sign to me that her faith is real. We talked about how rocks are heavy and sins weigh us down. We then put all of our sins in a basket and covered them with a red cloth to represent Jesus' blood. We left them in the middle of our kitchen table for the weekend, right next to Aria's white rose.
On Saturday night after Aria went to bed, we transformed the setting. When we were originally discussing how we wanted to do this activity, Justin and I wanted the basket to be about all of us because Jesus died for all of us. He takes away all of our sins. While we didn't really want to give each other presents, we didn't want Aria to be the only one with blessings in the basket instead of sins. Note to self, start thinking of blessing ideas and shopping for them sooner than Good Friday next year.
On Sunday morning, here was our table:
On the left is the empty tomb where Jesus' body was placed. In the middle is a new basket with Jesus' name on it and inside are all of our sins, covered with a white cloth. On the right is the original basket with our names on it and special blessings for each of us. One of Aria's blessings was a hula hoop, which is what is around the baskets. Attached to the hula hoop is Romans 8:38-39 where it states that nothing can separate us from the love of God through Christ Jesus. Just like a circle has no end, God's love for us has no end. Aria also got a cross necklace which we purchased to remember her giving her heart to Jesus. The little card the necklace came on actually said, "My heart belongs to Jesus." Aria got an Adventures in Odyssey cd, which are stories that are practical examples for kids to live out their faith. We also gave her a water bottle with the verse from John about Jesus being the living water inside of us. Justin got a new water bottle, too. There is a colorful plaque that has Philippians 4:8 on it, which is one of our family verses this year. And Justin and I both got books to help us grow our faith.
Our theme was to put things in the basket that either symbolized our faith or would help us grow in our faith. Of course it is really easy to find things for Aria, but it was a bit more tricky for mom and dad. After doing the basket and trying to think deeper about the meaning this year, hopefully we will have better ideas in the future. I don't want to buy stuff just to buy stuff, but I want to help us all think about how Jesus suffered severely on the cross so we could have the life we do today. The symbolism was powerful. Aria was equally amazed that all of our sins were in Jesus' basket as she was with the blessings that were in ours. Our sins were just gone and we did absolutely nothing to deserve it. Amazing! It gives me the chills to think about it.
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