Each year, our youngish kids grow older and as a parent, I’m forced to look at the passion and resurrection of the Lord – not only through my own eyes but theirs.
Their minds have expanded so much in the past year, and so while my message to them remains the same, the articulation changes.
So by necessity, I find myself every year in a strange dilemma — I can’t express the weight and gravity of the week as I, an adult, experience it, and yet I’m forced to confront the story in a new way that accommodates their brain’s mental and emotional capacity to absorb it.
As I think about how to do it, what happened that week grows weightier.
I hadn’t expected this! I thought this additional layer of thinking – “through their eyes” – would make it lighter, but actually it’s done the opposite.
No, I’m not showing them scenes from the Passion of the Christ, or describing the full horror of Roman crucifixion, the slow agony of the death of Jesus, dwelling on the sobering finality and certainty of dust-to-dust but joy of raised in glory. That’s a lot to take in for young minds still making sense of the world.
Yet I’m thinking of each of those new things more seriously.
So in putting this all together, I’ve decided this is what I’m, personally, and as as family, going to do.
At the beginning of the week, I wrote these simple introductory phrases.
Because Christ suffered and died, I can……… (fill in)
And then…
Because Christ rose again, I can….. (fill in).
Tell the kids they can write their own list (keep private or public from us), and I’ll do mine (sharing some and keeping others private).
Feel free to join me, if this is something that you think is helpful.
You can get as broad or as deeply personal as you want.
My list won’t look like yours, although there will probably be overlap, and vice versa.
Now if you do, here’s the key – be as extravagant as you want. Not as spiritual as you think you need to be.
Remember Hebrews 4:16, where we’re promised the right to come with “boldness” to the throne of grace.
The Greek for boldness implies “all out-spokenness, i.e. frankness, bluntness, publicity.”
I love that. Frankness. Bluntness. Be as blunt as you want about your own personal “thank you God’s”.
For example, I’ve been stuck on a miserable diet since my gastrointestinal perforation 3 years ago. I’m going to say, “Because Christ rose again, I will one day eat a Whopper again.”
Sure, I’ll get to do bigger things like see my dad again, feel Christ’s embrace at long last, knowing I’m home, but I’ll also just be blunt about all those things I’m excited for with a new body.
Do the same!
God is excited for you too! If a Whopper is good on earth, it’s going to be better in the new earth, and all good things will be better, so just have at it with bluntness.
Don’t feel you have to anticipate the joy of the resurrection in some Platonic “the body is a bad, the soul is good,” boxed in kind of way.
If you’re depressed, if you’re unable to be moved by anything on this earth, then just say, “I can be happy again.” Use that word happy. You don’t need to use the Christianese “joyful.” It’s great to feel happy!
It is the Good News after all.
There is nothing too small the Good News finds worthless to include and nothing too large it finds impossible to exclude.
[Painting: Entry of Christ into Jerusalem by Anthony van Dyck]
