Noah's first Easter

I love Easter week. When I was little it heralded Easter baskets filled with candy, beautiful dresses and curly hair, singing at church, dyeing eggs, and Easter egg hunts. Easter was a day where it seemed like everyone felt a little more special, looked a little nicer, smiled a bit more. I hope Easter means all these things for Noah (well, maybe not the curly hair and dresses). I imagine we will spend hours together coloring eggs with blue fingers, tromping through the grass searching out chocolate-filled delights, and dressing up special in a wee suit and tie. He'll get an Easter bunny and just snuggle it to pieces. He'll get a basket and giggle with delight. But I hope as he grows, he will realize just why we can have such joy on Easter morning, that in the near memory of our laughter, our singing, and our ever-present hope is the bitterness of Good Friday.

As a little girl I knew why we had Easter. I knew the story of the Last Supper, the garden, and the trial. My little heart had cried when I heard how they beat Him, how they cursed Him, how He hung and died for my sins. With childlike faith I knew the story, and I thanked my Jesus. Yet, I feel it is only with age, as we begin to understand the bitterness of mortality, the hurt of life, and the true extent of our own darkness, that the Goodness of Friday becomes real. As Friday becomes all the more painful, Sunday becomes all the more miraculous.

I was happy on Easter as a child. I long for Noah to find that same happiness. Now, on Easter, my joy is inexplicable. I still love Easter egg hunts and dressing up with curly hair. So much more, now, I love that my Savior lives. What hope! What life! What jubiliation to know the story, and to know it is true! It isn't that I want my baby growing up too fast. He's doing that fine on his own. But I do hope that as childish happiness fades, true joy will be revealed in his heart. That he will find Easter his hope, his chance to face his living God and worship with a heart that knows what a costly price was paid, and what a victorious Savior we love.