“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.” Ephesians 1:7-8
It's Holy Week. The time we turn our focus to this life giving good news, and the sacrifice by which it came to us.
I was so grateful when I found the book Benjamin's Box by Melody Carlson. I loved that its main character was a boy who shared our son's name. The story is about this boy's fictitious encounters with Christ during the week of his passion. After each encounter, the boy puts a tangible remembrance of the experience in his special box so he will never forget Jesus and all the love he showed.
The book gives instructions for gathering corresponding items for a box of your own. Each item goes in a specially colored egg (we numbered ours) to be opened at the appropriate time in the reading of the story. We hide the eggs and hunt for them before we read it. It has been a very sweet time.
One thing has surprised us as we have observed the Easter season with our kids, however. This is not a story that could be rated G. Many of the stories and movies are way too graphic for little eyes. (More about that here.) We felt that this book was among them. So Lee took care of that...
Even so, I would really recommend waiting to use it until your kids are at least five or six years old.We like to read the story anytime during Holy Week, really. But we usually try to do it before Easter to prepare us for the great celebration.
"Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift!" 2 Corinthians 9:14-15
7 comments:
I agree with you about the story of Jesus and the crusifiction. It is hard to explain, and my 7 year old still has a hard time understanding why someone would die for us! Don't we all? I love how you celebrate this! Great ideas and the book looks really great!
I've always had a difficult time getting the wee ones to focus on the real meaning of Easter, what with the Bunny visiting, and all. But as they got older, they somehow got the message. Don't know if was my superior skills as a mom, or osmosis, or what. But now that they're almost grown, they even observe Easter on their own, which really tickles me!
BTW, don't forget today's Sx3. Celebrating All Things Cherry Blossoms!
I am going to try to find this book before Sunday. I would love to share it with my class at church.
Oh, the sorrow on the faces in the last picture! We have a Good Friday service that always makes me cry, and I am always more emotional when I see the effect it has on my kids.
Lee's solution wouldn't have worked in our house. El would have ripped off those band aids to see what's underneath.
We used the Resurrection Eggs. Looks like it's pretty much the same idea.
This is a cool book. I think we read it to our sunday school class back when I taught sunday school. Very neat and way fun.
That sounds great... thank you so much for sharing...I will see if I can find one for Eli and Jasper.
I wanted to thank you so much for all your prayers, support, love, encouragement to me and my family on our blog. We appreciate it so much and are blessed by it!
I haven't seen this book before. Thanks for letting us know about it.
♥
Joy
Post a Comment