I'm 62, how long have I had Easter in my mind but really never thought about it. As a child it was a time to wear beautiful dresses my Mom handcrafted for my sister and I. It was a time to eat chocolate, it was a time to hunt for Easter Eggs. We went to Church but it never sunk in, the chocolate talked and I listened.
For years my eyes were closed and my ears could not hear. Then, the veil was miraculously lifted but beyond that, when it lifted, I chose to see and I chose to hear. Through it all, we have free will to accept a relationship with God or not. The cross, which is the great evidence of his LOVE for each of us, stands as a fork in the road and its there that we decide whether to turn to God or to turn from God. Once you see and once you hear things change and what you accepted or tolerated before can no longer be the reason for your existence. As a parent, I was not a born again Christian, I did not lead my child towards the light. For this, I repent and I am forgiven. So....my question to myself is this???? What can I do to share God's LOVE with the people I love? I can remember, a long time ago, my dear child getting on a bus that came through the neighborhood for a local church on Sunday morning. I can remember my husband and I being frantic that our child had been kidnapped, tortured, killed, lost to us forever. I can remember finding him hours later sitting the the last row of the Church listening to the sermon. The people lost were my husband and I, not Michael, and we were lost for many, many years. We lost our Child at 13, I lost my husband at 60 and I found my soul at 58. I do not believe my child is lost, nor my husband and I know now I am not lost and I look foward to seeing them again. I pray that God will use me to share his gift of eternal life to all who chose him above the world and all that is in it. Something that burns in me now is to know what I really didnt care about before. So in researching Easter, it's all about Jesus first and the Easter Bunny second.
Theological significance from Wikipedia
The New Testament teaches that the resurrection of Jesus, which Easter celebrates, is a foundation of the Christian faith.[6] The resurrection established Jesus as the powerful Son of God[6] and is cited as proof that God will judge the world in righteousness.[7] God has given Christians "a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead".[8] Christians, through faith in the working of God[9] are spiritually resurrected with Jesus so that they may walk in a new way of life.[10]
Easter is linked to the Passover and Exodus from Egypt recorded in the Old Testament through the Last Supper and crucifixion that preceded the resurrection. According to the New Testament, Jesus gave the Passover meal a new meaning, as he prepared himself and his disciples for his death in the upper room during the Last Supper. He identified the loaf of bread and cup of wine as symbolizing his body soon to besacrificed and his blood soon to be shed. 1 Corinthians 5:7 states, "Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed"; this refers to the Passover requirement to have no yeast in the house and to the allegory of Jesus as the Paschal lamb.[11]
One interpretation of the Gospel of John is that Jesus, as the Passover lamb, was crucified at roughly the same time as the Passover lambs were being slain in the temple, on the afternoon of Nisan 14.[12][13] This interpretation, however, is inconsistent with the chronology in the Synoptic Gospels. It assumes that text literally translated "the preparation of the passover" in John 19:14 refers to Nisan 14 (Preparation Day for the Passover) and not necessarily to Yom Shishi (Friday, Preparation Day for Sabbath)[14] and that the priests' desire to be ritually pure in order to "eat the passover" in John 18:28 refers to eating the Passover lamb, not to the public offerings made during the days of Unleavened Bread (Leviticus 23:8).
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