Rabbits, eggs, candy, and chicks have nothing to do with Easter. Nothing.
Really.
We Christians have creatively found meaning in eggs—they represent new life. An empty shell, the empty tomb. FamilyLife’s resource Resurrection Eggs® helps children learn the Easter story through a familiar tradition of the egg hunt. But Paul famously said when he became an adult that he put away childish things: “When I was a child, I talked l like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man I put the ways of childhood behind me” (1 Corinthians 13:11).
Yet even as adults, we have keep bunnies and chicks the centerpiece of our Easter celebrations—or we mix them into religious symbols—because they are comfortable and cute—unlike the cross and the death it represents.
But maybe we need a little discomfort. Jesus Himself didn’t choose His own comfort, but sacrificed Himself for ours instead.
Jesus chose to die. He submitted to the Father’s will to lay down His life. He could have stopped the walk to the cross at any moment. And He reminds onlookers during his arrest, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53). But He didn’t because of love. Love for His father. Love for you. Love for me.
Shouldn’t we grow up and focus on what He did? We don’t need dip-dyed eggs, a fancy new dress, or glazed ham to celebrate Easter Sunday. Easter isn’t a celebration of spring. It is the pivotal moment in all of history, the greatest victory of all. What Jesus accomplished on the cross is what we must celebrate.
Feel the anxiety of the days leading to the cross. Carry some sadness with you, remembering that your sin, my sin, caused His death. But only because He said it could be so.
Think about His loss today. For the heart of Christianity is not what we must do, but what He has already done.
Hallelujah!