When my daughter was about 2 years old we did this fun little activity for Easter – we took a marshmallow, rolled it in melted butter, cinnamon and sugar and then rolled that up inside crescent roll dough. The marshmallow was supposed to represent Jesus, the butter and spices, the oils and spices they buried with Jesus and the crescent roll was of course, the tomb.
The fun part is once you cook it, the marshmallow disappears leaving a big empty hole inside your crescent roll. It’s a visual reminder of how Jesus died and then rose again–leaving an empty tomb.
What made this really funny was my daughter’s reaction.
She was totally surprised that the marshmallow disappeared and kept saying, “But where did it go?!” Later that night, when my husband came home, she couldn’t stop talking about how that marshmallow had disappeared.
In her mind, she had witnessed a miracle!
The next Easter, I decided to do a Resurrection Garden with her. You may have seen these on Pinterest. Basically, you make a tiny little garden in a pie pan and maybe add a rock tomb or a little cross made of sticks. Some people add grass seeds and watch it grow.
We decided to decorate it with leaves and branches from our backyard. Honestly, it was pretty cute looking. My daughter loved her little garden and took a lot of care with decorating it.
However, after a couple of days, that little garden was looking a little dingy with all the dead leaves and wilting plants.
Then, I had a brilliant idea the night before Easter and ran to the grocery store to buy one of those five dollar bouquets of flowers. I pulled all the drooping plants off her garden and arranged the new brightly colored flowers on it.
That Easter morning, when she scooted downstairs and saw her garden, it really became a Resurrection Garden! She was so surprised and so amazed that her dirty little garden could be so beautiful.
My big girl is 11 years old now and her jaw doesn’t drop when we do these activities each year. But she does look forward to them. She anticipates the fun miracle she knows is going to happen.
Her excitement is a lesson to me. I’ve been around church and Bible stories since I was 4 years old. It’s easy for me to read through Jesus’ miracles and not even notice they are miracles. They are simply things Jesus did. I’ve read them a million times.
Read the rest of this post and more about how my parenting leads me to Jesus at Easter on the JellyTelly blog…
