Purpose

The Most Important Thing to Do When Celebrating Easter This Year

Years ago, after my sister was married and had purchased a home, she claimed the right to host Thanksgiving.  Since my mom’s birthday is on Christmas, she had a trump card for hosting that celebration.  Not wanting to be left out of the opportunity for my family to gather at my home, I tagged Easter. At the time, my hostessing skills were pretty minimalist, but God sent me help in the form of my husband who knows how to make even the most mundane things fun. Although his elaborate plans often cause me to question whether we are aiming too high, he always manages to pull them off. And the crowd of people who gather at our home, always end up having a good time. 

Because of our history of hosting Easter, my kids have always known Easter celebrations filled with activities and people we love. It was quite a shock for them to realize that Easter this year would look considerably different. Our house would not contain any of their friends, and there would not be a photo scavenger hunt or a candy exchange for them to try to get their favorite treat. We wouldn’t be donning new clothes or taking pictures in front of our church’s floral cross. This Easter promises to be the quietest one that they have known. 

As their disappointment became evident to me, I tried to think through how we could “make it up to them.” I pondered how we could still make the day special despite the lack of normal events. I considered whether an egg hunt with just our family was even worthwhile and what I should do about dinner for our considerably smaller group  I wondered if it was even worth attempting to create special memories since things would be so different from what they have grown to expect. In a sense there was a feeling of futility as I contemplated the day. In all likelihood they will never again experience an Easter like this one. Is it even worth it to go through the effort of trying to replicate something that will never match what they hope it will be? 

Yet as I thought about these things, I was reminded that whatever hindrances social isolation creates for our Easter celebrations, it cannot detract from what is most important about our time together – making Christ the focus of our day.  Pondering His death on Good Friday and His subsequent resurrection on Easter morning is the real reason for the season. And while fancy new attire and hunts for eggs may normally distract us from this most important thing, this period of sequestering at home should renew our commitment to put our focus where it should be – on the saving work of Jesus Christ. 


What are some practical ways that you can do this with your family? Here are five ways:

1. Read – Each day of this week, read about what happened on the corresponding day during Passion Week. This is a helpful guide to help you know what to read. If you have younger kids, it may be beneficial to have them act out the various parts of the drama as it unfolds. This will not only keep them engage, but it will also help them personalize the historical events recorded in the Bible. 

2. Sacrifice – Make it a goal this week that everyone in your household will make a sacrifice each day to serve someone else  – just as Christ sacrificed for the sake of His children. Everyone in your family can participate in this and every night you can discuss how each individual’s sacrifice mirrored the sacrifice of Christ.  Maybe a sibling extended forgiveness just as Christ did to those who put Him on the cross. Maybe Mom gave up rights to her “free time” to play the game that the kids have been longing to play – just as Christ gave up His rights to Heaven in order to come to this Earth. While sacrifice for the good of others is always commendable, in order for this sacrifice to deepen our commemoration of Easter, it is important that we think through how what we give up is parallel to what Christ gave up for us. 

3. Give Thanks – In your prayers this week, thank God for one thing that you receive as a result of what Christ accomplished through His death and resurrection. We may be quick to think about what we have given up for Christ’s sake, but the truth is, what we gain because of what Christ gave up for our sake is far more significant. If you are struggling with coming up a list of things that Christians have gained because of the work of Christ -here are a few ideas:

  • Eternal life -John 3:16, 
  • The promise of seeing the glory of God – John 11:4
  • The assurance of being sealed by the Holy Spirit – Ephesians 1:13
  • A lasting Inheritance – Acts 26:18
  • Forgiveness of sins – Ephesians. 4:32 
  • Justification in the Sight of God – Galatians 2:16
  • A new life in Christ – Galatians. 2:20; 2 Corinthians 5:17
  • Access to the Father – Ephesians. 2:18
  • Being God’s son or daughter – Galatians.3:26
  • A confident hope – Romans 15:13

4. Memorize His Word – If we want our minds to be fixed upon Christ, it is helpful for us to know what the Bible has to say about His death and resurrection. This is a good time to hide some verses in your heart – and to help your family do so too If you are wondering which verses to concentrate on, here are some suggestions (please note – I tried to pick verses that could be memorized by family members of all ages , and ordered them from based on difficulty for memorization)

  • John 14:6 –  “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
  • Romans 5:8 – ” but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
  • I John 4:10 – ” In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
  • Ephesians 2:8 – ” For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,
  • Romans 10:9 -” that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved”
  • Romans 1:16 – ” For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
  • Acts 2:38 –  And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
  • I Corinthians 15:3 – ” For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,”
  • I Peter 3:18 – ” For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,”
  • Isaiah 53:5 – ” But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”

Share the Gospel – There is no better way to commemorate what Christ has done for us than to share it with someone else. This may be someone in your household, or it may be someone who you check on to see how they are adjusting to this temporary norm. It may even be someone that you get to talk to in the grocery story? line, while you wait on your turn to enter. Can you imagine how much richer your Easter celebration will be if you get to play a role in helping to bring someone to repentance and faith in Jesus Chris? 

As we face an Easter season that looks so different from what we are used to, it can be easy to put our thoughts on all that we have had to give up. And yet, in the quiet of our homes with minimal social obligations, this may be the perfect time to check our hearts and make sure that our Easter traditions are primarily about Christ. We can renew our commitment to put our focus on that which is most important and we can start new rituals that help our families, and ourselves more purposefully celebrate the events of Passion week. We may feel like we are missing a lot, that everything is “cancelled” to use the popular term, but if we are diligent, we can use this sequestering to gain a return that egg hunts will never provide. We can concentrate on that which is most important this Easter- and every Easter- by centering our hearts and our minds on Jesus Christ. 

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Purpose Work

What To Do When You Don’t Know What To Do

I’m a planner. I like to have a schedule and a to-do list, and when I put my head on my pillow at night, I rest better when I know I have accomplished what I set out to do that day. Of course, in light of the recent global pandemic, planning has become much more difficult. Whereas I used to thrive under a regular routine, there is little about my day that has routineness or regularity. We have tried to create new family schedules to add structure, but on a good day, that plan is only followed loosely. We wake up each day to find out what the home-assigned schoolwork will be, as well as what the government’s official’s latest directives are. When we think we can anticipate what is on horizon, we learn that our picture is murky at best. 

It is tempting to become overwhelmed because of the uncertainty. We don’t know how long we will be directed to self-isolate, and we don’t know when normal activities will start to resume. For many people I know, their temptation towards anxiety is even stronger because it is impossible to anticipate how their jobs will be affected if this situation continues unabated. Even if I start to mentally make plans for what we will do once we are back to our routines, I quickly realize the futility. I don’t even know what month it might be when that occurs, nor can I rightly anticipate how the world and my world may be different because of the road we had to traverse to get there. 

Our inability to anticipate what lays ahead can lead to a kind of paralysis. Because we don’t know what next month, next week, or even tomorrow holds, we aren’t sure how to go about today. Of course, the reality is that our uncertainty is nothing new; we have never been able to predict what will happen in the next minute – let alone what will happen when the sun rises anew. But in our current situation, we feel this inadequacy more acutely, and as a result, we may respond to it with a greater degree of inaction.

So what should we do? As I have pondered this, what repeatedly comes to mind is some advice I once heard from a friend who had been on this Earth a lot longer than me. It turns out it mirrors the advice that Elisabeth Eliot gave her daughter (as reported in her book, “Suffering is Never for Nothing”) and the advice that I am reliably told is given by Anna in Frozen 2 (I haven’t seen it yet).  We need to do the next right thing. 

Now considering this instruction is found in a Disney movie, it may sound contrite. It should be noted, however, that long before an animated princess sang it, the advice was given by far more trustworthy sources, as noted above. Even more importantly, this is the pattern that we see in Scripture. Although there were times that God gave His people glimpses into what would happen down the road as part of His divine plan, that was the exception and not the rule. Far more often, God called people to do the next thing, and to trust in Him for what would happen after that. Whether this is Abram being called to an unknown land (Heb. 11:8), Jonah being instructed to go warn Nineveh  (Jonah 1,3) , three young Jewish boys obeying God instead of bowing to foreign idol (Dan. 3), the disciples being called to follow Christ (Mt. 4:18-22), or  Peter being called to meet with Cornelius (Acts 10:19) – time after time, God called His people to do the next thing, without revealing how He would use their obedience to further His plan. As Shadrach, Meshach, and Abdednego told the king when they refused to worship a false god – they knew that God could save them, but they trusted in Him even if He didn’t (Dan. 3:16-18). What would happened as a result of their faithfulness was not assured – but the fact that God would use their obedience for His glory was. And that guarantee was sufficient for them. 

As evident by these biblical examples, and many more, our inability to discern the entirety of God’s plan shouldn’t prevent us from doing what we know we are to do. It is unlikely, however, that for most of us the next right thing will be of the same magnitude as these biblical accounts. For us the next right thing may be sending an encouraging text to a friend, sacrificing “our” time to serve our kids or spouse, folding the next load of laundry, or wrapping up that dreaded project at work. It may also be daily engagement in a spiritual discipline like reading the Bible, memorizing Scripture, or spending dedicated time in prayer. While we may think avoiding these tasks are inconsequential compared to those in the biblical examples just reviewed, we tend to forget that the Bible only gives us some details of each person’s life – it doesn’t convey every time that these individuals did the next right thing leading up to the moment of import.  In other words, the reason they were inclined to faithfully obey God when it seemed to really matter is because they had a pattern of obedience long before that. Or as Jesus said, because they were faithful in little things, they would also be faithful with much (Lk. 16:10). 

So  if we are tempted to spend our sequestered time at home relentlessly checking the news, mindlessly scrolling through social media, binge-watching shows, or absorbed in self-pity, overwhelmed with our lack of perspective on what the future will hold, let us run from that temptation with speed. We may not know all that we need to do in the days, weeks, and months ahead, but we likely do know what needs to be done next. And if we are faithful to obey God in that, He will use our pattern of obedience during this time to accomplish much for the purposes of His Kingdom, in ways that we cannot even anticipate as we trust Him for what the future will hold. 

(Postscript – As I was working on this post, my sister shared a post that she had written with the exact same title that I was going to use. I consider it an honor to be thinking along the same lines as her, and although I avoided reading her post until after I had finished mine, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass by to point out the providential alignment, and to share her post too.)

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