Beyond the Bunnies

 A bit of mommy guilt crept in today. Perhaps it was the “egg” homework assignment given to my seven year-old or the dinner conversation my eight year-old initiated about hiding their Easter baskets. While other families may have been making bunny crafts or shopping for dresses and matching shoes, this was our first talk about Easter… well, about THAT Easter. 

It’s not that I’m anti-bunny or egg. We do have a tradition of dyeing eggs on Holy Saturday and making some kind of sweet treat on that day. But that’s about it because our home life reflects our church life. My children have a pastor for a dad and a church musician for a mom.

It’s Holy Week. Need I say more?

Perhaps I don’t need to, but I will… just a little. When I felt that twinge of guilt, that twinge of not diving headfirst into the pastel-hued, sugar explosion that passes as Easter, I realized what my children do get:

To sit at the foot of another and have their feet washed; to wash another’s feet. 

When I asked my children’s choir what they needed to remember about the Maundy Thursday liturgy, one girl piped up: “we can’t wear tights with our dresses.”

To hear the passion story of Jesus sung in notes written five hundred years ago, but brand new to their ears.

To hold a candle lit from the new fire, to sing and play instruments, to rejoice when the sister of a fellow choir member and friend is washed in the waters of Holy Baptism, to stand in a circle and receive the feast of Jesus.

To shout, sing and carry “Alleluia!”

It’s not the Easter the store circulars advertise, but I trust for me and for my children that it is the “Three-Day Feast” that will nourish long after the sugar rush has expired.