Nora competed with the best in her age group for egg gathering this morning, her first egg hunt to enjoy since she was barely 1 year old last year. Our church in Richmond, Texas has a prayer garden centered on one of the oldest and biggest oak trees in South Texas. Our early service for Easter is always in the garden, weather permitting and today's weather was beautiful. After that service, which is very much geared to children, we gather across the street for breakfast of egg casseroles, fruit, cereal, donut holes and families who have not seen each other for a long time catching up. This is followed by the egg hunt, with older and younger children hunting in separate areas, and then we all go to a 10:00 a.m. Easter service that celebrates the resurrection of Christ. We have been part of this congregation for 24 years, and we always look forward with anticipation to the parts of this schedule that are the same and we always experience something new in the worship led by our pastor and music ministry.
Nora holds a basket that is a small picture of this old and familiar coupled with new experience. She is carrying her happily retrieved eggs in the Easter basket that was mine when I was her age! Something that was loved and passed down and kept. Our Easter traditions are a bigger picture of that for me, and of course so much more important. I am grateful for old stories and new ones, and most of all for the most powerful gift and story of all time, of Jesus' life and death and resurrection.
