When they drove the spike into His sinews; all that lay dead, stirred.
And when they drove the cross with the crucified Man into the earth, all that lay buried, heaved hope.
There's a death that births life.
And the revived and resurrected people,celebrate Easter and the Crucified Christ who makes all things New.
Could there be a more important hol-i-day? Holy Day? Come join us in really celebrating!
Five Meaningful Ways to Celebrate Easter
1. Keep Watch with Christ in the Garden:
Make A Miniature Family Lenten Garden
Our beginning, and our mortal fall, began in a garden.
Christ's beginning to right that fall began in a garden, passion anguish dripping great drops of blood. And so our new beginning begins in a garden, a stone rolled away to that echoing tomb, shroud whispering in the wind.
So make a miniature Easter garden, a miniature garden for Spring, remembering of the grief of our first Eden beginning and the wonder of our new Christ beginnings...
Our children anxiously look forward to lighting one more candle in the Lenten garden during the week leading up to Easter...
When the Israelites brushed the blood of the lamb on the lintels of the Israelite doors, the angel of death passed over their homes. And Easter again invites God's people to continue to keep the Passover, thankful celebration of the Blood of the Christ lamb marking the doors of our hearts, that the angel of death now forever passes over us.
Why keep the Passover, that day that God said "shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations, as a statute forever" (Ex. 12:14)?
It isn’t about keeping laws and regulations. It isn’t about keeping our burdens. It isn’t about keeping some empty, meaningless customs.
It is about keeping something worth preserving: emblems pregnant with the fulfillment of the New Covenant. It is about the questions that keep time to the beat of our children’s heart: Why am I here? What does all of this living really mean? Where am I headed? When will I be all that I am to be?
So we take out our messianic passover seder plate and goblet and we read the very thoughtful booklet that accompanies it, explaining the essential elements of the Passover feast and why keeping the Passover is significant to all believers in Jesus Christ.
This meal is truly the highlight of our year... and our children keenly await celebrating Passover, even more so than any other holiday of the year...
As we decorated a Christmas tree with the symbols of Christ's miraculous coming... so we decorate an Easter tree with the symbols of Christ's miraculous saving.
As Advent days are marked until the birth of the Babe in Bethlehem, so we too reflectively observe the days until Easter, keeping company with Jesus as He carries the cross --- all our Grace-Hope -- to Calvary. Consider making a Family Easter Calendar -- much like an Advent Calender --- a way to mark the days till Easter -- and the culmination of all God's promises in Christ.
We create a quiet corner to come write out our confessions,scratch down our repentances, tuck them away in the dark of a tomb-box... and come Easter morning, we leave the box empty too, burn all our sins away, and hope rises from our ashes.
This one activity has so grown and moved us... our family repentance box has stayed year-long...
Behold your lamb... who comes to take away the sins of the world...
The sins of today. So we, the dead made alive, our dry bones dance joy and all the world watches the glory celebration of the Hosanna people who cannot help but sing New Life!
Ann Voskamp is a farmer's wife. She's mama to six kids. She knows dirt. Especially in her own heart. When kids and washing machine sleep, she scrubs her dirty laundry...
The snow here has finally let go in the sun. A few days get warm enough to remind us of Spring, a coming time, though the ground still crunches with frost underfoot.
The sniffles and the water puddles in the drive have kept us cooped in exhausted routines, in the smells of sick winter. The unopened windows bend in the shape of old house, and so do I.
Some days I want to run out of here with my arms open to the sky. I want to ride in a convertible car with a beautiful scarf holding back my hair, riding behind me on the wind.
Some days I would change my name, call myself Tululah, and become a studier of nightingales or a singer in parks.
Some days I consider a life of anything other than this one, and I do it because I am impatient for Spring.
So much of this life in the body isn't about freedom with our skin. It's not the wind in our hair that makes us free. It's the movement of the Spirit, the growth of our invisible side.
My son asks that we watch a bean sprout in a clear plastic cup, and in no time, it does. A white tongue lapping out for water, breaking through. The seed of a full grown plant drops into water and becomes a new plant, green and alive.
Spring is coming.We feel it.
So our invisible sides imagine the ground shifting and then releasing - not ghosts - but new, live bodies in a blossoming chorus. We imagine the Deep Love swooping, calling deep down love to rise up to meet Him.
One day we will be Spring, the faces of our hearts in our final, great, and eternal Ode to Joy, our real freedom, real birth.
Amber Haines - a Southerner, a struggler, and a straggler with half an MFA in Poetry - lives in Arkansas with her husband and the three boys they birthed within...
In one emotionally draining [understatement] week, I lost it all.
My best friend.
My ministry.
My church home.
My peace of mind.
My understanding of where life was going and what the next day/month/year would even look like.
Something died that week.
Do you know that feeling? I think we all do at some level, right?
The realization that, in a moment, so many things housed in the TRUTH category can be ripped out and put in the THAT'S WHAT YOU THOUGHT category.
Painful. To date, the most painful experience I have ever known.
And though details would make this a juicy story and a real tear-jerker, I've never written about it and I won't.
But. What I will tell you about is how God used that experience to change my entire life.
As Bible teacher and author Beth Moore says, "God allows wounding in your life so that He can bring healing."
And that statement, my friends, can have permanent residence in the TRUTH part of your heart.
In the few months after the total destruction of the life I knew, God began to speak to me of His love. At first, my reply was, "Uh. Yeah. Are You serious right now? Cause hello! You just allowed my life to FALL-A-PART. I'm supposed to label that as LOVE?!?"
[Cause sometimes a sarcastic tone is all I can muster. Forgive me.]
I went to a new Bible study during this LOVE season. My heart was broken and in all honesty, I felt a bit lost in my own skin. So anytime someone invited me to something involving God, I went.
The leader passed out a drawing, a tree with a girl standing in front of the trunk, to each of us. The goal, she said, was to add leaves to the tree with words representing all the ways God is using you in the world, yadda yadda blah blah blah. I stopped listening.
I stared down at my tree. And it looked just like me. Bare. Empty. Dead.
My eyes began to focus and see something coming out of the limbs. I grabbed my Raspberry Crayola marker and began to color.
There, in the empty, in the death, in the absolute absence of life, was L-O-V-E.
Can you see it?
When everything was pruned away, there I was, standing under the tree of His love.
Today, if life seems to have thrown you more curve balls than you can even fathom, if all that was true yesterday is suddenly false, if you are broken in the deepest of places,
I'm asking God to draw near to you.
Because somewhere in your bare branches, He is writing His love to you.
Annie Downs tells stories for a living as a freelance writer in Nashville, Tennessee. Flawed but funny, Annie uses her writing to highlight the everyday goodness of...
The good news is we. have. 3. Gussy. laptop. bags. left! (But not for long. . . )
Update: Thank you ALL for filling out our little survey. Your responses blew us away and will help us serve you better. We have three randomly selected winners of Gussy laptop bags. . . I've sent an email to the three winners. Check your inbox. It might be you.
Stephanie, co-founder of (in)courage, is a gatherer of people & ideas. Nothing delights her more than creating unforgettable experiences for God's daughters.
Sometimes a bully arrives in disguise: in this case, an unexpected snowfall, beautiful to the eye, glorious to (my snow-deprived, Southern) soul but cruel and unpredictable to tire's tread.
The bully double-dog dares me to move, and I march across his silly imaginary line, defiant and bold on the outside while a rabble of butterflies swarm in my belly. I haven't driven in snow for 100 years and never for 300 miles.
A few weeks ago, treacherous driving conditions threatened to cancel our annual Valentine Tea Party. Stubborn and determined, I wasn't going down without a fight.
Why did it matter so much to me? Why would I leave my husband and sons?Why would I ask my socially-busy daughter to give up her friends for a weekend? And why in THE world would I drive five hours in SNOW when I wasn’t sure if anyone else could even make it?
Within my reasons for pressing on, I think there's encouragement and challenge for all of us.
Fifteen years ago, my mother-in-law Sarah, asked me if I'd be interested in hosting a mother-daughter Valentine Tea Party for my then three-year-old daughter. My "Yes!" was immediate, and Sarah's sparkling eyes proclaimed her fingers-crossed, hoped-for answer.
A little confession? A few years ago, right after we moved five hours away, I was done...finished...over it! But at some point before the next February, I realized this tradition was bigger than my personal inconvenience.
Now, I will do anything in my power to continue this tradition for my mother-in-law's sake.
As evidenced by driving through Friday afternoon Atlanta traffic in the midst of a freak Southern snow storm.
[2] It binds the generations and teaches by example.
For a few hours on "Valentine Saturday", three generations of women skirt the dining room table and feast on friendship, family and Valentine fare. Appealing to palate and eye, the menu is decidedly girly. The table is dressed in polished silver, dainty fine china, wrinkle-free linen and flower-laden vases; the ladies--the "littles" and the {ahem} "bigs"--are dressed in holiday dazzle with the loveliest accessory of them all: good manners!
"Please" and "thank you" pour as freely as sweet tea. Conversation is laced with news and opinion and of course, stories of another time. Laughter rains. Smiles paint faces. Younger girls learn not to demand more than their share of attention and conversation becomes art...a masterpiece brushed by a room full of artists.
No one rushes to leave.
[3] My daughter refuses to stop growing.
She's over half-way through her junior year of high school, and I hear the clock ticking. Loudly.
We've encouraged independence in our children and from the time they toddled, ignorant arrogance easily proclaimed "we aren't raising them for ourselves, we're raising them for someone else." I still believe that but its truth stings my heart.
She has no memory of a Valentine's Day without the Valentine Tea and even at 17 she appreciates the value of tradition. This hasn't been explicitly taught, it's been caught by years of consistency and observing key women in her life--aunts, cousins and one Best Friend Forever for each of the granddaughters...and a very well-intentioned mother and grandmother. Relationships connect the years.
Real conversation unravels when you have ten hours alone in a car. This is my favorite part of her age--her probing questions, watching her wrestle with contemporary issues through the filter of faith. She tells me about another student who is pregnant at her school and the door is opened to frank discussion on premarital sex, dating, birth control.
She doesn't expect some of my responses, but she gets to see how I wrestle, too. Then we tackle alcohol and casual drug use. Next, friend frustrations. She has permission to speak freely and sometimes I have the privilege of helping her see with new eyes. Sometimes she does that for me.
Traditions are important; not for traditions' sake, but because they honor those who take part, bridge generations and strengthen family fabric.
Your turn: Besides the obvious "big" holidays, do you celebrate in a way that breeds tradition? Might you consider beginning your own? Because I haven't done this with my boys (and my husband doesn't have a similar annual event with them either), I'm especially interested in suggestions you might have for sons.
Robin, married to her college sweetheart and mom to two teens and a tween, used to have a lot more answers to the Christian faith when God lived neatly in a box...
"It is the childlike mind that finds the kingdom." Charles Fillmore
Obliterating-expection response to last month's Artist-Creative challenge suggested (in)courage readers are eager to take part in a community that not only gives permission to exercise our creative calling, doesn't just stop at encouraging it, but actually applauds it! Armed with only 17 syllables to construct a simple, three-line haiku, writer-readers submitted inspiring, heartening, thought-provoking poems--with talent to the overflow.
With love lingering and Spring just around the corner, this month's challenge is elementary: color!!!
Think about it--children have unbound imagination, seeing the world with wide eyes and mystery; no wonder one of their first-and-favorite words is "Why?"
Your kaleidoscopic assignment is to find a coloring book that reawakens the little girl in you; then, color your favorite page from the book. Snap a picture and post it on your blog along with a brief commentary on why you chose it (100 words or less). Be sure to link it below when your done, and all posts linked by next Friday, March 5th at midnight EST will be eligible for a $25 gift certificate for the (in)courage shop (& everyone is eligible for 15% Off All Items from DaySpring through 04/01/10 with coupon code: SAVE15).
This challenge might seem a little juvenile at first, but we're pretty sure you're going to have FUN in the process. Plus, you can do this side by side with your children and they're gonna love it!
Let us know you're "in" with a quick comment. If you don't have a blog, be sure to email pictures to me (pensieve.me@gmail.com) and I'll be sure to upload them, too.
Robin, married to her college sweetheart and mom to two teens and a tween, used to have a lot more answers to the Christian faith when God lived neatly in a box...
When I’m over the cereal bowl, reaming off all this day is going to bulge at the seams with, he offers me a scratch pad and says it quiet, “Here, just make a list for your day” --- and I’m the one looking blanker than an empty page.
Bits of my brain with its to-do lists, long lines of my soul written around menu plans and pieces of my heart, just scratched down on scrap paper? The things I’m trying to remember, the list of food I’ll cook tomorrow in the kitchen, the letters I need to write next week, just open a vein and let my life dribble out across bland, uninspiring paper?
I grip the ballpoint tight over recycled fiber but I can’t bring myself to it. It’s not my constitution to lay my life down unframed.
“Maybe I lay out some more pages first in my journal? And then I’ll write down all these tasks jockeying around in my head.” I lie down the pen and he smiles kind.
For me, life is art and these lists and notes and child quotes and reminders and words, this is our quotidian poetry, the daily symphony, the everyday masterpieces.
The art of our lives deserve a frame.
I thumb thrifted magazines, yellowed library discards, old postcards.
I lay out collages on two page spreads, frame bits of beauty around the white space left for the day chronicling and I glue down five spreads --- enough frames for a week of time. And I think of how’d my Grandma Ruth would have shook her head and just whipped out a used envelope, the front with its smeared postage mark and curled stamp edge, the side tore open. And she would have laid her scrolling Edwardian script all across the perfectly good back of that envelope: Pick up at the Met: bananas, oil of olay face cream, pantyhose, tic-tac breath mints, call Irene McBride about the shower at the hall, go for a walk, take the empty milk bags over to Roger’s.
Every woman beautifully has her own unique constitution.
Grandma would have thrown that envelope straight in the garbage just before she turned the last light out for the day.
She never sent any of those envelope lists into the future.
What if she had made a journal frame of her ordinary days? Had left to her grandchildren the treasure of her life’s art in a bound book of her lists? What she made for dinner in mid-February 1967, her daily counting of blessings, what she prayed for through the decades and children and stack of bills.
I smooth out my last journal page, lay my last collage frame down, and I am ready now to make my list for the day.
Because these tasks, these menu plans, our notes to ourselves, our to-dolists, these moments make our lives: each one is momentous. And if each moment lived is important, then why not make a ceremony of even the simple, write down the lists with a flourish, celebrate the tasks of the day by framing them in journal beauty?
He finds me mid morning, jotting down lists in my Celebrating Today journal.
Ann Voskamp is a farmer's wife. She's mama to six kids. She knows dirt. Especially in her own heart. When kids and washing machine sleep, she scrubs her dirty laundry...
Lisa Leonard is mommy to two boys, David, 6 and Matty, 5 and wife to Steve. In between school and work they spend their time playing outdoors on the central...
Sometimes at the end of a long day I think back to what I've accomplished and frankly, I've got nothing.
Loads of laundry left piled, dishes washed, a bookshelf half organized resulting in a bigger mess that I'll have to tackle tomorrow, dinners cooked only to end up scooted around on a dish and somewhat complained about. Sometimes I wonder why I don't just get rid of everything in our house and cook the same two meals every night.
But I know why I toil with organizing bookshelves, experimenting with new meals and daring to risk wasting a precious hour on a craft that may or may not turn out. Because it adds to our home experience.
Home. Do you love being there? Does your family look forward to going home?
Our home is my headquarters. I work, play, create and invest in lives at home. Home is where my ministry is based. The ministry to my husband and boys. Home should be the safest, most comforting, inviting, beautiful, invigorating, welcoming place here on earth. I feel like anything I do that enhances our experience at home is well worth the trouble. Time making our home beautiful and orderly is time well spent.
But I don't want to have a lovely home just for the sake of loveliness--what a sad waste, like plastic protectors on a sofa. A home that has been tended to sets the stage so the most important stuff can happen.
So on a day like today, as I sit surrounded by the undone, I recognize that I am in the midst of big things slowly getting done one day at a time in the comfort of our home. And I am thankful I have the privilege to set the stage.
The Nester, who writes anonymously, is a home stager, redesigner and design school drop-out. She and her husband and their three boys have moved 14 times...
Update: Congratulations to Beth for winning the $25 gift certificate to (in)courage!
I want to push you, swiftly and hard.
Not in the way that bruises knees and pride but in the way a mama bird nudges her lovies out of the nest. She knows they're capable of doing so much more, that they only need a little encouragement. Mama knows they'll soon find out she wasn't being mean after all, that she just wanted them to experience Great Things, Wide Open Spaces...and what they were designed to do.
It slays me to know I'm created in the image of God; I can barely think on it. I don't think it's even possible to comprehend fully all it means.
If we're called to be imitators of Christ, to look like the One whose image we bear, what does that mean? What are the first qualities that come to your mind? To love lavishly and without condition? To forgive freely even when you've been wronged? To serve sacrificially and to consider others' preferences above your own?
“If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story.The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.”
~ Don Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, pp. 59
There's another attribute of God I'd like us to consider together, the place I'd like to swift-kick you into action.
Your potential to c r e a t e beauty. To liberate your imagination. To plumb the depths of your artistic abilities, regardless of how latent you think them to be.
There is no greater Creative than the Creator of the Universe--suns rising and setting, oceans roaring in and purring out, bows of color punctuating an afternoon rainstorm. Sponge-soak these in and we're full of His goodness and inspiration! Doesn't it need to leak out before we burst?!
I've been watching you, dear Friends of (in)courage...observing you...sensing your response to a Higher Calling, from women who write and inspire you. And I know you're Poet Warriors, hearts of beauty seeking their reveal to share with someone who notices.
Someone notices.
Start the New Year with me exercising not just your body, but your soul! Join me in an artistry challenge where we do something that stirs your Artist-Creative within. I'm not completely sure what this will look like, interest and participation will determine that. Sometimes we'll have writing challenges (hint: I love writing poetry ;) ) and others we'll break out the glue and glitter.
To be honest and to encourage you, THIS is a challenge for me, too! So often I let the demands of life and family crowd out any room for creativity. B u t...when I take time to write poetry or create an original hand-stamped note card, I feel accomplished; something lovely exists, that didn't exist before.
Seventeen syllables (three lines--line one, five syllables; line two, seven; line three, five)--that's it! Set your poem in Winter, but you don't have actually to use that word; other than that, you're free to express yourself however you'd like.
When you're done, please link it below if you've posted it on your site (invite YOUR readers to join you!) or note it in comments by midnight on Monday the 18th. If you do either one, you'll be entered to win $25 to the (in)courage shop! Do both and you'll get TWO entries!
And to encourage one another, please make sure to read and comment on everyone's work.
{Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go pray...now that I've put this "out there" I'm a little afraid I'll be the only one who shows up for the party. Please come back to help me eat cake!!}
photo credit: Emma Thomson, Felicity Wishes series at allposters.com
Robin, married to her college sweetheart and mom to two teens and a tween, used to have a lot more answers to the Christian faith when God lived neatly in a box...
