Charlyne is out this Saturday morning before Easter with all seven grandkids. Without a doubt, each will go home with an Easter treat. Charlyne is helping to build memories that will last their lifetime.
Christmas is the season associated with memories, but I can recall many a memory from Easter. I can still remember the delicious smell of my great grandmother's Easter ham cooking. I can remember overloading on Easter candy at my grandmothers. Jumping ahead a generation, I remember how good my mother's Easter potato salad tasted. I remember the thrill of dying eggs with my sister. I recall how my mother always took our daughter, Lori out to buy her a new Easter outfit. (I can even remember when ladies wore corsages to church on Easter.) Now it is Lori's own daughter, Kayla, who makes grandpa's cross-shaped cake each Easter. How carefully she dyes the coconut green to represent grass, and conceals jelly beans in it as Easter eggs.
Things are tough right now for many of the families God allows us to work with, but He always provides ways for each of us to build Easter memories for the people around us. Will you do that this weekend?
Sadly, I also recall a couple of Easters when I was a prodigal. How out of place I felt attempting to celebrate Easter with another man's family. How foolish I felt wearing the Easter shirt that the other woman had purchased for me. I might have gone through the motions, but deep inside I knew this was all wrong. My praying wife and our kids needed me on Easter, not a replacement family.
Please pray with us that prodigals will find their way to church tomorrow. May pastors be prepared with messages that lead people to receive Christ, and that start prodigals on the way home. May lives be changed for all eternity as men and women, boys and girls, come to Christ. Now that would be a beautiful Easter memory.
