Pleasant Passover

(Grrr! Blogger didn't save the final version of this post - so here's ANOTHER one!)

This year we celebrated our first passover meal, in spite of my earlier post. It's made Easter this year more significant than any other year.

On Friday morning, the boys and I read the passover story. Their questions were so insightful. It's quite challenging as an adult getting your head around God hardening Pharaoh's heart, and even more so as a child, and understnading all the plagues! I kept trying to explain how Christ is our lamb and therefore our 'passover', something I'm sure they'll come to understand more and more.

We then spent some time colouring in pasover sheets that I found here (we only printed the three that were relevant to the passover elements we chose to incorporate. Interestingly, reading the different haggadahs made me realize how religious passover has come to be as well - it's not just Christianity that has become too religious for its own good):

We prepared a delicious passover meal, (try this recipe - add a small diced butternut and a diced sweet potato -  Taryn inspired me!). Belle helped me make it, but I think she somewhat misheard me when I asked for her to put one bay leaf in ...

this is her 'I know I've been naughty look'!

We then left it in the slowcooker and it was good!

We also prepared a seder plate, (Jolanthe has posted a free passover lapbook - click on seder plate and print  one out) which the boys used to help retell the passover story to Braveheart at the end of the day when we sat on the floor for our meal. It was truly a very special start to Easter.

On Saturday we tried se7en's hot cross buns, which was an experience in itself. Aragorn just wanted to smell the dough rather than eat it!

Today they celebrated Easter with their traditional egg hunt, and I'm pleased to repot we managed to get them to wait until it was light, and we made it before the rain!

the seekers...
forgive the blurry photo, someone wasn't really with it yet!

the finders!

And the afternoon was spent visiting family, we made these easter baskets as gifts (and used wool, not strips of material).

Happy easter to you and yours!

The Pressure's Off!

Our first rainy day of winter. And I'm enjoying it. It's the first day I have sent my kids to school with shoes in a VERY long time, and Belle was not amused that she had socks on. I love that last winter was so long ago in her mind that she has forgotten completely what socks are and how they feel!

I had a revelation whilst driving the school route this morning. It was prompted by a conversation I had with a new friend last week. For the last 10 years, she and her husband and now family of 4 kids have not celebrated Easter or Christmas. For them, learning about the reasons behind all the present day traditions and celebrations led to feeling convicted not to partake in any of it, as when you really get down to it, it's mostly all pagan festivals we've kind of adopted as being the norm. So for them, they celebrate three festivals - Passover, Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles. Easter, and Christmas Day don't feature at all on their calendar. 

That conversation prompted something I recalled from 'God Grew Tired of Us' (heart wrenching title huh?) this profound documentary (a must see) on the orphaned boys from Sudan and

their travels, and the journey some of them made to America. The one man

(once boy) was interviewed at Christmas time in America, and his face 

painted a picture of a thousand words. He was utterly confused. 

He kept asking what this Christmas thing was, and why it was celebrated

like this, and what was with the Santa and the trees? The director than cut to a 

shot of how they celebrate it in the refugee camps - and the JOY, the pure 

joy was almost tangible.. No trappings. Nothing false - just real fellowship for a 

real reason.

And my revelation was this: if we CHOOSE see these times of year for what 

they really are - consumer driven festivals that happen to occur at set times each

year, then we can choose to celebrate the truth whenever we want throughout

the year. Why am I trying so hard to make these seasons so significant? Why not just live the truth all year round? I cannot tell you what a feeling of relief that brought me. I'm not going to spend hours researching how to make Easter meaningful, or print coloring in pages of tombstones rolling away or anything like that. I'm 

going to wait...and when I feel led, we'll talk about the birth of Christ, or his death in our normal daily lives.

I'm not sure we're about to embark on anything quite as radical as not celebrating it altogether, as there are things within these seasons that I love, but it's certainly given me much to dwell on.

Food for thought huh?