Tuesday, April 22, 2014

A Letter to Rose: It's Not About the Bunny

My dearest Rose,

It was so wonderful for us to be together on Easter! I am thrilled that you are speaking my name and ask for me from time to time. What a joy that is, to be known by you. . . and even more for us all to be known by God!

Speaking of God, I wanted to write to you to remind you of something very important about Easter. Easter is not about the Bunny. I hope this is not news to you.  Now I know we get all carried away with taking pictures with the Rabbit and hiding eggs (bunny eggs? No!) and all of that fun stuff, but Easter is about what God has done and is doing in our lives. You see, Rose, Jesus is God's son. His only son in the flesh, who came into the world to make sure that all of God's people (that means you and me and Mommy and Daddy and everyone else in the whole wide world) would know him. Just like you know my name and God knows our names, God wants every person in the world to know his name. To know someone's name is to know them deeply and have a relationship with them. The bunny is cute and all, but the bunny didn't do anything for us that required such a deep and abiding love.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that Jesus loves you and so do I! And he came into this world so that we would be free. You don't know what that means yet, but someday you will. Someday you will know the pain of sin and joy of being forgiven. Someday you will understand that there is darkness in the world (you won't like it but you'll recognize it) and you will know the light of Christ. This is the light that shines in and through you because of Jesus, because of your baptism.

Oh and one more thing. In the church on Easter we always get to shouting this really cool phrase because we are so exciting that God raised Jesus from the dead. Yes, that's what I said, he was dead and in a tomb after he was hanged on a cross almost 2000 years ago. But God did a miraculous thing: he made Jesus alive again. And not just for a few days or weeks or years, for ever and always! So in worship one person will say, "Christ is risen!" And then everyone else shouts back as loud as we want to show how happy we are, and we say, "Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!"

Why don't you try it? It's kind of fun actually!

Here's a picture of you, my darling girl, on Easter day.



See you soon,

Your Godmother -Aunt Amy

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