Good Friday--and Jesus, the Author and Finisher of Our Faith

This year I wanted to do a little something special in our family for Good Friday.

There have been times I forgot all about Good Friday until it was over.
Christmas is something celebrated for a whole month anymore.
But isn't the death and resurrection of Christ more important?
It would be so terribly easy to just follow the world around us in using Easter eggs and chicks and bunnies and candy to celebrate the Easter season. 

To do differently, you have to be intentional.
But even on Pinterest and online, there were others who wanted to make Christ the focus of Easter for their children and families, rather than the Easter Bunny or Easter egg hunts.

They don't condemn Easter eggs or bunnies.
They just want to make Christ the focus--and I liked that. 
Interestingly, we received the children's first order of real spring chicks today! They should have arrived two days ago, and we prayed the chicks would survive the blizzard's delays while they were cramped in their boxes at the postal service buildings!
Praise God the 100 chicks arrived with only two fatalities!
Several people are scheduled to arrive tomorrow to take their order of chicks home. 
Above, one of the children took this picture of the chicks on newspapers and clippings, one of which happened to be a bulletin with the cross.
The Good Friday morning sunshine opened these beautiful tulips, the centerpiece of our table this Easter season.

This afternoon, with the children's help, I made "pumpkin" pies (with blended canned yams)
and decorated with strips of pie crust sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

Hannah brushing egg white on the crust strips.

Also, I'd gotten a recipe for Empty Tomb Rolls off of Pinterest.
Timmy, Danny and Hannah loved rolling out balls of refrigerated dough and wrapping a marshmallow inside each circle of dough. Then they brushed the roll with egg white and rolled the roll in cinnamon sugar.

When the roll is baked, the marshmallow inside melts into the dough, and the roll ends up hollow inside.
The family loved them!
They are incredibly easy (thanks to boughten refrigerated dough, but you could use your own dough),
and I love anything that has a special significance in relation to the real meaning of Easter.

So here are the baked Empty Tomb Rolls and the pie with the scene of three crosses which we added to our Good Friday supper.

 During supper, I had chosen a verse for us to learn and discuss, Hebrews 12:2.

"Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."

I asked what the joy was that was set before Jesus, and each person gave his own answer.

Danny said the joy was that because He died, other people don't have to die [in sin or forever].

Another answered that the joy was to have done His Father's will.

Another answer was that the joy was the fulfillment of the plan of salvation, and yet another was that after the cross, He would get to go to heaven!

I had a bit of an object lesson as we discussed. I set a box of Blue Bunny ice cream cones in the middle of the table as the treat that each child would get for learning this verse.
Before he got the joy of licking the cone, he had to endure the hardship of learning and discussing this long verse!
Even as the children were willing to do this small difficulty in order to obtain a joy,
Jesus was willing to do a very hard thing to obtain a very wonderful joy afterward. 
This was a fun way to get even children to participate in talking about something serious and needful.

We had a wonderful supper time, finishing with a time of prayer by candlelight.
I quietly snapped a few photos on purpose for my blog, with a few giggles or fusses here and there, and Sam waiting for his turn to pray until
"everyone...is reverent!"
So I "reverently" put my camera away, and we prayed for the Christians who cannot worship freely as we were this evening, for friends traveling to a funeral, for those who haven't heard of Christ.

 After supper clean up and chores and kitchen work was done, I read to the three little ones part of a book I found at the library called The First Easter. 

I was grateful for this lovely picture book that kept the three children entranced with the story of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. We finished at the part where the centurion declared, "Truly this was the Son of God!"

The rest of the story waits till tomorrow.

So while the snow fell silently and softly outside till by now several more inches are on the ground,

inside we are cozy--

in fresh, fun ways,

remembering Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith!