Resurrection Eggs...

One of the sweetest craft projects any of my kids has ever made came home with my daughter in first grade. They made a set of Resurrection Eggs. I sent in an empty cardboard egg carton and a dozen plastic eggs. What came home was a treasure.

If you don't have your own set of Resurrection Eggs, consider making one. I know you can buy them in any Christian (or even many secular) bookstore, but there's something special about making them yourself.

Here are three neat websites with instructions for making Resurrection Eggs:

Christian Homemaking

Easy Fun School

Rainbow Castle (a division of Just for Kids magazine)

Have a blessed Easter season!!!

Wondrous new life

The picture below didn't come out very clearly since I had to take it from inside through a (admittedly dirty) window and screen, but it is our momma dove (whose tail you can see sticking up on the right) camped out in her nest, also known as my hanging basket! Her eggs recently hatched and I think she and her little ones have moved out to another nest, probably because she wasn’t expecting to have her quiet home disturbed a few times a day by our family going in and out the door a couple feet from her home! I was sad to see her go because it was truly glorious to watch new life emerge just outside our front door.

It gave me a daily reminder to praise God for being the author and creator of all life. I’ve had a lot of those reminders lately: not one but two births in my circle of friends this month, the blooming daffodils in my backyard (that sadly died with the snow!), the white blossoms adorning our Bradford pear tree (which my daughter mistook for snow when she first saw them!) in our front yard, the new skin that’s regenerating where my recent staph infection was on my leg, and the little boy kicking inside me who we should be blessed to meet in less than a month! So much new life to celebrate!

As spring officially begins later this week, I encourage you to look for the new life that God is creating around you and use it as a reminder to praise Him! And, of course, the new life that I’m most thankful for is that which He created inside me when I became His child and the promise held for me in His resurrection that we will be celebrating on April 10th this year.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! ~2 Corinthians 5:17

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. ~Romans 6:4-5

(If this “new life” thing seems strange or foreign to you, my friend, please email us at CelebratingChristmas@gmail.com. We would love to explain it in more detail and share with you about the new life God has created in our hearts and lives!)

Celebrating Lent!

Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. –Psalm 73:25-26

When Lent officially began a couple weeks ago, it might have passed without much notice on your part or you might have been at church getting ashes placed on your forehead, depending on your church and denomination. The church season of Lent, leading from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday, the Saturday before Easter, is meant to be a season of preparation for Easter. Whether you typically celebrate Lent or not, it is wise for each of us as believers to prepare our hearts to celebrate Christ and His resurrection at Easter and every day.

Traditionally, the 40 days of Lent represent the 40 days during which Jesus was in the wilderness and tempted by Satan, found in Mark 1, Matthew 4, and Luke 4. During that time, Jesus fasted, which is why it’s common to give something up, or fast from something, during Lent. Earlier this week I read an article in the paper about the recent popularity of people giving up technology in various forms, such as Facebook, ipods, or even email, during Lent. While I usually think of fasting as going without food, as Jesus did in the passages listed above, the true purpose of the practice is to take our focus off earthly things (like food or Facebook) and to instead focus on God.

So what is your focus right now? In other words, can you truly and honestly repeat the words of the psalmist above: “And earth has nothing I desire besides Christ.” If you can’t, why not? Is there something you ought to fast from?

Here’s an example. About a year ago, I found myself saying one thing with my mouth but doing something else with my actions. I said I wanted to start the day in God’s Word and in prayer. I often started the day with the newspaper instead. You see, I’m a newspaper junkie. I don’t feel like my day is complete until I’ve read the paper from cover to cover. This habit started when I was 11 (yes, I was a nerd!). There’s nothing wrong with reading the paper daily … but my actions were conflicting with my intentions and in essence saying, “And earth has nothing I desire besides Christ … and my daily dose of the news.” Now I hold myself accountable to spending time reading Scripture and talking to God before I take the paper out of its blue rubber band or plastic covering. While this isn't a true fast since I still read my paper daily, it is a shift in focus from the earthly (my newspaper) to the eternal (God and His Word), so it holds true to the purpose of fasting.

In John 3:30, after John’s followers have called it to his attention that this Jesus guy is stealing away some of his disciples, John says, “He must increase; I must decrease.” During this season of Lent (and during every season of your life), pray for God to show you what it is that you desire besides Him and ask Him to reveal any area of fasting that might benefit you, so that by changing your desires and actions you can decrease and He can increase. I pray that Christ and His resurrection will be truly magnified in your life during this Lenten season and beyond!

Contentment...

When I woke up Monday morning, this was the view out my front door:



And this was the view out back:


It was a Winter Wonderland, for certain. What beauty! Of course, being in the South in March and having already gotten a warm spell of weather in the 70's, the snow was quite a surprise. Having been at a pretty huge deficit for wintry precipitation for the past few years, we'd pretty much written off the season and set our sights on spring. Although a nice break from the routine of school and work was welcome, this snowfall met with a bit more ambivalence that the last.

Spring had started. Instead of shoveling sidewalks, our neighbors busily beat the snow off the tender growth on their hedge. While people contemplated putting sheets over the the daffodils that were already blooming, most realized that the blanket of warmth would turn into a literal blanket of snow, crushing the blossoming flowers. There was a grumbly undertone to this snowfall, diminished only by the forecast of 70's returning by the end of the week.

Our last snowfall was a blast. I ran out and played in the snow with my kids. We went sledding and had snowball fights. We took pictures and built snowmen. But this time, guess what I did? I cleaned the house and did laundry. It just wasn't the same.

I started thinking about it and realized that my enjoying Abundant Life often rests on the events of life going as planned, according to each season. Paul's words in Philippians 4 came to mind: "...for I have learned in whatever situation I am in to be content" (v. 11). Learned to be content. There's a blessing to resting right where the Lord has put you. Have you ever noticed that kids love snow no matter when it comes? It doesn't matter if it stops school or work or creates all sorts of delays completing a "To Do" list. If there's snow, they want to be in it, enjoying it for all it's worth... at least around here where we don't have a whole lot of snow.

So take a minute to reflect on your unexpected "snowfall." What's in your season that you didn't see coming? How is the Lord using it to make you slow down and appreciate Him? How is He growing your faith? How is He reaching out to you to cultivate the very intimate relationship He longs to share with His beautiful child? Where is your place of rest... in your circumstances or in your Father? In what areas of your life are you content? In what areas do you lack contentment? Is there anywhere contentment has grown into complacency?

We're still in the season of Lent... the time that we examine our hearts in light of God's Word and ask Him to reveal the dark places and come in and make them clean and bright. What a beautiful moment it is to realize that we're always living in a season of grace.