Easter Cookies

The kids and I mixed up the sugar cookie dough and were ready to cut out the cookies.  We got out our bag of cookie cutters and began choosing which ones we were going to use.  Peyton immediately found a cross and said “a cross Mommy, where Jesus died.”  I was so proud of him.

Then I had found a flower, a butterfly, and a bunny.

“A foot!” Peyton said excitedly when he found a cut out shaped like a foot.  “A hand too!!!!”, now even more excited.

“Try to find cut outs for Easter buddy, like the cross.  Look what Mommy has, a flower, a butterfly, and a bunny.  There’s an egg somewhere I think…”  I said to him.

He replied, “Mommy, they put nails in Jesus’ hands and feet when they put him on the cross, and that’s why we celebrate Easter.”

When icing them, he even asked me if we could put red on them where the nails went.  So we did, we made Jesus’ hands and feet for our Easter cookies because “that’s why we celebrate Easter.”

Easter is not about the egg hunts, the Easter bunny and hidden candy filled baskets.   I often hear and had even said myself  that it’s about the cross.  It is about the cross.  But I think we have become so accustomed to hearing the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection that it has somehow lost its value.  We are thankful for it but what does it really mean to us?  

“Do you suppose that I cannot appeal to My Father and He will immediately provide Me with more than twelve legions (more than 80,000) of angels?  But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must come about this way?”  Matthew 26:53-54.

Jesus could have choose not to die for our sins.  He could has called upon the angels to rescue Him.  But He did not…He choose to die for you.   

This Easter weekend read Matthew 26-28.  Understand the meaning of the cross but also look further.  As you read, imagine Jesus and how He felt and what He went through.  Look at how He trusted God.  It is a love-story, a story of God’s love for us by sending His Son to die on the cross for our sins and rise again.  

“While we were yet in weakness, at the fitting time Christ died for the ungodly.  Now it is an extraordinary thing for one to give his life even for an upright man, though perhaps for a noble and lovable and generous benefactor someone might even dare to die.  But God shows and clearly proves His own love for us bu the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Therefore, since we are now justified by Christ’s blood, how much more certain is it that we shall be saved by Him from the indignation and wrath of God.  For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, it is much more, now that we are reconciled, that we shall be saved [daily delivered from sin’s dominion] through His [resurrection] life.  Not only so, but we also rejoice and exultingly glory in God [in His love and perfection] through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom we have now received and enjoy reconciliation.”  Romans 5:6-11