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Happy Easter
Easter falls on Sunday, April 15 this year (2001).
A long time ago, when the youngest of my girls was small, I wrote the following story. I wrote it because someone tried to tell us that it was bad for children to have Easter baskets, egg hunts, and the like because the Easter Bunny has nothing to do with the true meaning of Easter...
Please don't pass on my story without my copyright information and link. God bless you!
The Easter Story
Small children cannot understand the true meaning of Easter. They have no way to understand death and rebirth. In fact, adults in general don't really understand the concept of death until they are old and come face-to-face with the inevitability of their own mortality.
When we are a bit older than early childhood, maybe even sometime in our teens, we become excited about what the Easter celebration means to Christians. But before that, we tell our children the true story of Easter and then we give them Easter baskets, Easter eggs, candy, and egg hunts so that they will maintain that excitement until they are old enough to understand what it really means.
This is my story for all God's children about the bunny, the Easter basket and its contents.
The bunny symbolizes Jesus, Himself. He is soft and gentle and comes to us at Eastertime just as He returned to us nearly two thousand years ago. As He did then, He still brings us gifts beyond measure.
The basket is the all-encompassing love of God. It is all around us and holds us safely as we are carried through our lives.
The grass in the basket is the soft place where we rest when we are believers. It keeps us safe and cushions us from the blows and hardships of life. In times of trouble and sorrow, the cushion of belief keeps us from cracking our fragile earthly shells.
The eggs stand for the symbolic rebirth that we experience when we truly accept Jesus as our personal savior. They are simple things, just as the requirements for salvation are simple.
The colors of the eggs show that we are all alike on the inside, whether we are purple, yellow, blue, red, green, orange, or even multi-colored on the outside. The white of the egg is the purity of Jesus and the purity He offered to us by His crucifixion and rebirth. In religions that require communion, it would signify the purity attained by symbolically consuming His flesh and blood. The yellow center of each egg is the Light of God that shines in and from each of us.
The candy is the sweetness of the love of God. It is sweet to know that God loves us all and holds us safely in His basket.
We hide the eggs just as the true meanings of life and death and even our beliefs are hidden from us and we hunt for them as we grow older, with the help of God.
We hunt for the eggs just as we continue to seek knowledge of God and his glories. Every time we learn a Bible verse, read a chapter, do a kindness for someone, or try to become a better person, we continue that hunt.
The shining faces and happy smiles of the children who receive Easter baskets are a reward for the adults who watch over them. In a small way, we know then how God feels about each of us. All in all, as Martha Stewart would say, "It's a good thing."
It's FREE!!! This is a really good site and you can find a lot of old friends there.
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The Easter Basket graphic at the top of the page is from Maryann Sterling's Art
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LadyZinnia's Easter
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Mesa AZ Valentine Luncheon 2001 and Fritzie's
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A Memorial and Tribute to Ezee
Two