Family Holy Week Part 1

For the most part, my generation has been one that has disregarded church traditions and viewed them as meaningless and nothing but religiosity. In many ways, they're right. But I think we've thrown the baby out with the bath water. I can't say that I haven't done the same. Growing up Southern Baptist, traditional forms of high church worship and symbolism within Christianity have been somewhat foreign to me. And as religiously routine as they can become, I think there are some good things that can come from them.

This being Holy Week, Tasha and I have been researching and thinking of our own ways that we could celebrate this week within our own family, finding creative ways to teach our children the importance of the death and resurrection of Christ--perhaps not totally high church, but symbolic and meaningful nonetheless, intentionally reinforcing the key truths to our kids. We've decided that each day this week we will employ various activities to accompany our normal family devotions and worship time so as to help our children begin to understand what it is that Jesus accomplished through His death and resurrection.

We started last night by reading the story of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and we reenacted the event with the kids, using flower pedals and tree branches in place of palm branches. After an hour of scraping embedded flower pedals off of the couch cushions, we sat down with the guitar and wrote a couple of cheesy children's songs together, focusing on the death and resurrection of Christ--songs that we'll continue pulling out throughout the week. If I have some extra time this week, I may actually record them and make them available for download. We'll see. It partly depends on just how vulnerable I am willing to make myself and how willing I am to expose that tender side of me to total cyberspace strangers. Hmm ... decisions.

I'll try to keep tracking our progress throughout the week and let you know whether I think our kids are "getting it" or not. In the meantime, if you have kids (or even if you don't) I encourage you to think of some creative ways to reinforce and to remind your children and yourself of the incredible price that Christ paid for you on the cross and of His glorious, sin-defeating, death-swallowing resurrection.