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Dr. Rhett Wilson Sr.
Holidays, particularly religious ones (the word holidays is derived from the words holy days), carry with them a lot of memories that invoke various emotional responses.
Easter reminds me of decorating Easter eggs with my mother using the PAAS egg dye kit. I remember seeing my grandparents every Easter, usually at their house. We enjoyed egg hunts and Easter baskets.
I have very fond church memories from various Easters. I received my first real Bible from my parents one Easter — a bright yellow “Good News” one, which still sits on my shelf today. I was baptized by my pastor on Easter Sunday 1982. I remember big Easter musicals the weekend of Palm Sunday, singing hymns like “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” and always having a new Sunday-best outfit to wear. Our church had a cross outside each year, and on Easter Sunday we would all bring fresh flowers to fill it up with color. And I recall every year ABC playing Charlton Heston’s “The Ten Commandments” from 7 to 11 p.m.
My own family now has some of our own holiday practices, many of them similar to those of my boyhood.
We have never done the Easter Bunny with our children. We weren’t terribly opposed to it, but our church jobs always required one of us to be out of the house early Sunday morning before our children awoke, so we made it our habit to give our children their Easter baskets on the Saturday before Easter.
We chuckled then and still do now thinking about when our then 5-year-old came home from church one Easter and said, “The children in Sunday school were talking about some bunny coming to their house this morning! What are they talking about?”
Easter offers wonderful opportunities, whatever your practices, to talk with your children about the essence of the Christian message — that God loved a sinful world so much that He sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven and we could have a forever-relationship with Him.
Don’t underestimate what children can absorb. One of the church missteps of our time is how we send middle and high school students to school where they learn algebra, chemistry, history and foreign languages, yet we bring them to church and think that all we should do is play games with them, thinking that they can’t yet absorb the great truths of the Bible.
And don’t miss opportunities with your own family members and other people in the community to share biblical truths about the gospel message.
Perhaps my most vivid memory of an Easter season was when I was in the third grade. Our church did a musical called “Hosanna” the weekend of Palm Sunday. I still have the cassette tape from that performance. My grandparents came to attend with us, and I sat directly next to my grandfather.
I will never forget that when they came to the scene where Jesus was dying on the cross, my grandfather began quietly sobbing. Tears were streaming down his face. At that moment, in my little 9-year-old thinking and feeling, I was deeply struck with the fact that this stuff is deeply real to him. This matters to him. His life has been changed by the cross. He loves and respects God. I remember that moment like it happened last week. And I doubt I will ever forget it.
Don’t underestimate how your faith and your love for Jesus, shown in your own unique way, can deeply impact the life of another person — even a child. Thirty years from now they may be remembering you from this Easter.
Dr. Rhett Wilson Sr. is a freelance writer, editor, ghostwriter, copywriter and transitional pastor of Spring Hill Baptist Church in Lancaster. Check out his site at rhettwilson.org.
Dr. Rhett Wilson Sr. is a freelance writer, editor, ghostwriter, copywriter and transitional pastor of Spring Hill Baptist Church in Lancaster. Check out his site at rhettwilson.org.
