Resurrection Garden

My prayer for my children from birth has been that they would know the Lord intimately and fall deeply in love with him.  As we prepare for Easter, the most important holiday to us, I want to teach them about Jesus' love and sacrifice for us...so that they may know the weight of what he did for us from an early age. 

We started off our holy week activities today by making a resurrection garden.  First we went on a little scavenger hunt around the neighborhood for 6 twigs and a big rock.  Charlotte found some twigs and a medium sized rock pretty quickly, and she was so proud...

We went all around the neighborhood looking for a bigger rock, and finally found one in our next door neighbor's yard.

Once we had all of our supplies, we started on the garden, making a hill with potting soil on top of the "tomb" (a small terra cotta pot)...

Then we added some pebbles in front of the tomb...

And placed our big rock partially in front of the tomb, showing that the stone has been rolled away...

Then we sprinkled the grass seed on top of the hill...

And took our twigs to make 3 crosses...

At this point, Hunter started talking about Jesus' crucifixion, telling us that there were 3 crosses because there was 1 "bad" robber and 1 "good" robber with Jesus, which opened up an opportunity for me to tell him (once again) about Jesus' saving grace...how he forgave the robber that believed in him, telling the thief that he'd be in heaven soon.  Hunter responded by going into a monologue about how there was blood on Jesus' hands and feet and body with a little too much enthusiasm.  (I fear that I will never understand boys as long as I am raising him.)  I tried to divert him to the weight of what happened that day.  How Jesus took all of our sin on his shoulders because God is so holy that he can't be in the presence of our sin.  Clearly, it was a little over his head, but we'll just keep teaching:)

After we put our crosses in, Hunter watered the soil so that the grass will grow...

I can't wait until it comes in.  New life.  That's what we'll see in those little blades of green.  And what we have in our Lamb.  Our Savior.  Our King.

Tonight we talked about Palm Sunday and what it meant, and then read the story of Jesus taking his disciples to Jerusalem for the Passover feast.  Riding in on a donkey with all of the people laying their coats on the path in front of him and waving palm branches while shouting, Hosanna!  Hosanna!  Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Blessed is the King of Israel!

He is the King.  The King of Kings who came down from heaven to die a gruesome, lonely death for me and for my sweet son and daughter and husband and for you.

If you want to make your own resurrection garden, just follow the directions here.