Let’s teach our children about Jesus Christ
THIS past week, millions around the world hunted for Easter eggs, ate more candy than usual, and put bunnies around their home in some sort of décor. Why? To celebrate Easter. Really, what is Easter all about? Easter is about celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
For our family, for Easter we did some new traditions this year. Typically, we would go to church and celebrate with extended family. However, due to COVID-19 restrictions, movement was limited and we couldn’t get home. Likewise, sadly COVID-19 restrictions have kept our children from church for months now. Therefore, we are having to work harder to try and teach our children things they would have normally learned at church.
First of all, with Good Friday and Easter Monday as holidays, the kids were off school. Therefore, we decided to take a break from work and really try and enjoy quality time with the kids over the weekend to build some memories, even if we couldn’t leave our city. Friday night we watched the Passion of Christ.A gruesome movie which depicts the last hours of Jesus.
There were scenes where the kids felt it was too much. Why did Jesus have to suffer that way? It lent itself easily and naturally to many talks about how our sin separates us from Jesus and Jesus literally took our sins and died for us. From there, we did a fun exercise which I only thought about as we watched the movie and discussed the fact that Jesus died for us. We went around the family (three kids and my hubby and I.)
Each person talked about the sins they struggle with. Then, another person “pretending to be Jesus” said that person’s name in such a manner as this, “Ashley, over 2 000 years ago, I had to make a choice. I asked God if He could take this burden from me, but He said there was no other way to help you pay the price of your sins. I thought about you and I died for your sin of XXX (listing the sin we said we are struggling with). I did that because I love you and because I can defeat death and still live so that you can now have a relationship with God through me.” We went around the family and each said our sins and then someone else “pretending to be Jesus” assured that person that Jesus loved them and died for them.
That was Friday night. Saturday we just enjoyed some fun bonding time over yard work, going out for ice cream and family games. Then, Sunday morning, thanks to the wonderful YouTube, each family member got to choose praise and worship songs and then we sang worship music to the laptop playing YouTube songs with lyrics.