Teachable Easter Baskets

Just like we try to be purposeful during the Christmas season we also want to use the Easter season to not only have fun among those we are called to love but to also teach and celebrate what Easter really is.

I mean, its only the day we celebrate the most important event in the history of people. {yeah, I’m Sorry…My Kids Don’t Believe in the Easter Bunny. Don't ask, they'll be confused.} The day a Perfect Man with all resources at His disposal chose to conduct the largest bailout that has ever been and ever will be for all the scanky, dirty, and despicably unworthy- US. I don't know about you, but a creepy bunny bringing cavity inducing goodies to my littles just doesn't seem to do such an event justice.

I got the idea of unEaster baskets from good oh Amanda. Now, don't think this amazingness went down all glamorous with no squabbles, confusion, and utter annoyance at my littles inability to understand simple directions but it was more purposeful than just sitting out baskets of goodies while giving credit to a cute furry mammal.

unEaster Baskets:

• During their nap I put together their Easter baskets with little goodies I'd been collecting and hid them.
• As they began waking up I was still finishing up writing egg labels that helped make everything in the basket point back to Jesus in our lives.
• When they were all awake, I had sat them all at the coffee table with a bucket of rocks and markers.
• We walked through what sin was: bad choices, and how those sins hardened our hearts like rocks.
• Then we talked about Ezekiel where is says God is going to take our rocked up hearts and replace them with new ones.
• After much confusion and worries over whether they would get in trouble for confessing, they each came up with a couple bad choices they had made and we drew a picture of or wrote the word on the rock.

Here comes the fun part:

• We all walked outside with our sin while we talked about how Jesus said He promised to take our sins away and chunk them as far as the east is from the west: so far we couldn't even see them on the other side of the fence.
• While we talked, we wondered to the back of the yard where I had hidden their baskets under a red bedsheet.
•  Then I reminded them that on a Friday, Jesus, who was perfect and never made a single bad choice, picked to pay for all our sin by dying.
• I ask them to chunk their rocks onto the sheet that was a picture of His blood that paid for our bad choices.
• When all the rocks were on there, I told them how God redeems all those bad things, takes them away, and replaces them, just like our rocky hearts, with new exciting things.
  
• I pulled the sheet off the tops of the baskets while wadding the rocks up inside it, revealing their baskets of gifts.
• We sat on the trampoline and read through the promises of Jesus and they found what represented that in their baskets as a reminder of that truth.
• Then we wore sunglasses, ate candy, and squabbled over how to get off the trampoline and how much candy they were allowed to eat at once.
  

Just when I began to get annoyed, explaining to hubs that I thought it was a waste, He just smiled and said he liked it. When we were putting everyone to bed {EARLY because of sleep deprivation this week}, Jamin ask Matt what Easter was. Matt told him that it was the day we celebrate Jesus coming back to life. To which Jamin responded, "and taking our rocks?" #winning I think this will be a regular tradition, of sorts.

What kind of tradition does your family have to celebrate the true meaning of Easter?