Train up a child…

Plan a Meaningful Easter for Children

Oh what fun to wake up in the morning to a pretty Easter basket! It is a very nice thing for children to remember. Easter egg hunts are looked forward to with much anticipation. In addition, many children get a new Easter outfit to wear to church on that special day. These are all great things to help children remember Easter as a special day.

I wonder how many children have been told the real meaning of Easter. Do they know that eggs represent new life? Do they know that spring, itself, represents the awakening of new life? Do they understand that Easter activities remind us of the fact that the rising of Christ tells us that we, too, will have new life one day?

Why not have the children lay out their clothes the night before Easter so they can get up early and go with the family to one of the many sunrise services in the community? How often does a family watch the sun come up together? Let the children experience the feeling of getting up early in order to identify with the feelings of the ladies who went to the tomb of Jesus only to find it empty. Remind them on the way to the service that the Christian faith is the only one that worships someone who arose from death. Then, after the service, go to breakfast together as a family. Again, many churches in the community serve a free breakfast. If there isn’t a church serving breakfast in your area, go to a restaurant together. Then follow up by attending worship service.

Many egg hunts are sponsored by organizations at times other than the actual Easter Sunday. It is nice, however, to let the children color and decorate their own real eggs on Saturday; then, they can hunt them on Sunday afternoon with dad and mom watching.

A special Easter dinner before the hunt is nice if everyone pitches in to help. The nice thing about ham on Easter is that it takes very little effort to prepare. Let each person choose ahead of time the contribution he/she can make to the dinner. Even very small children can help by setting the table or just putting one thing on the table such as the napkins. Even though it may be easier to do it yourself, it is important to have the children participate in some way. There are many foods already prepared that can be purchased if the children are all too small to give much help. The goal is to have cooperation among family members and for the children to feel a sense of worth for having helped.

We should not forget Good Friday. I remember helping my dad and mom plant potatoes on Good Friday. Although this is not a celebration of a holiday, it still served as a memory of Easter. I remember how we would talk about Friday being the time Jesus was crucified and how sad we all felt.

It may seem strange to talk to children about death and life after death, but it certainly is a subject they need to know about. Each of us has to face death some day. The apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 15:35 to help us understand death: “But someone may ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.”