Advent for Easter

We've been reading through an Easter devotional book called the Journey of the Cross for the past several weeks. It's been a neat time to spend more than just a week or a weekend to remember the significance of Easter. We've done a few activities to go with the stories including acting out Palm Sunday (Brad played the donkey role- which was purely practical- no hidden meaning behind that one), "painting" our doorpost for Passover, carrying some 2x4's (this was after reading about Jesus carrying his own cross...not just manual labor ;-), eating unleavened crackers (along with some funny looks when they discovered the tastelessness of it!).
We didn't want to get behind in our readings so we actually even took it with us on vacation over Spring Break. It was a bit strange because our story was about Jesus washing his disciples feet. So we used the hotel rooms ice bucket - hey I'm not nothing if not resourceful. ;-)


but my very favorite thing we have been doing is what I've called our "confession cross".
In November we have a lot of fun doing our Thanksgiving tree- we write out what we're thankful for on little leaves and our tree is full and overflowing by the time Thanksgiving rolls around. These past 2 weeks we've written our sins on a piece of paper and are making it in a cross shape. I wouldn't exactly say this is "fun". In fact, it's very sobering. Humbling. Not only are we writing them down but we're reading them to each other- many times it includes someone sitting at the table with us that we need to apologize to. It certainly isn't as easy and fun as our Thanksgiving tree- but no less important I think.