Palm Sunday

It’s Palm Sunday. Our oldest daughter got to carry in a palm branch this year for the first time. She mostly shook it and tried to bump it into her neighbor’s branch as they sang, but I have learned that with Kate everything is stored in her little mind. What seemed not to have an impact right now, will be talked about over the next several months and perhaps even years.

We had a little chat about Holy week and what Jesus did for us. How He chose to go into the city, knowing that He would die. Taking our sin. I think the thing she got the most out of our talk was the fact that people threw their “coats” (cloaks) in the street. She also was surprised that people would want to kill God. That’s a tough one to explain to a munchkin, but we did our best.

This is they year I had planned to really introduce her to the Easter story. I think she’s reaching an age that she will start to understand it. She’s heard the story, but I have been waiting since she was one to introduce a plan that I learned about in a MOPS group in Alabama.

Here’s the basic idea… On Good Friday, you cover the cross in your house with black cloth. Then you either take a doll or other item, wrap it in strips of cloth. Then place it in a “cave,” which can be made out of anything from Legos to paper machete. Cover the opening with a rock. Then Sunday morning the girls are to rise early to go and anoint the body with oil (a little bottle of perfume). Of course when you get there, the stone has been moved. The cloths are there, but the doll is gone. You then go to wake the men of the house. She gets to live the Easter story in the shoes of the women who first found the empty tomb. She hasn’t heard the story enough times that I think she’ll be expecting it. I can’t wait to see her reaction. What will she do?