Building Blocks of God’s Love for This Season of Lent and Beyond

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My grandson and I were driving to his home the other day and listening to his Bible memory work, the 10 commandments, on a CD. When it was done, we started talking about the passage that tells us not to worship idols. I pointed out to him that even though we don't have little statues that we bow down to ("Like the golden calf, grandma," he asked. Isn't he SMART! Bragging grandma moment, here), we can still have idols – like a TV, Gameboy, Minecraft computer game, etc. He asked what we had to do to prevent that from happening. I suggested praying about it often, regularly "surrendering" all our favorite things – and ourselves – to God and asking Him to use us and them to bring glory to God. I was so blessed when he agreed with that. 

Then I asked him if he wanted to do our Easter Resurrection eggs again this year. I was afraid he'd say that he was too old for those, but he was actually quite excited. He loves the hiding of them, the finding, and the retelling of the Easter story. From there, we meandered into the idea of making Easter story "vignettes" on Minecraft. "What a grand idea!" I said. "And if you and your brothers do that, I'll take pictures of them and put them on my blog. That way we can share them with others. Wouldn't that be a great way of using Minecraft to share the story of Easter." 

As you can probably tell from the pictures I've used with this (the top picture is an angel, the cross and the empty tomb; the next picture is the last supper with a cup of wine and a loaf of bread), he LOVED that idea and so did his brothers. Now, Minecraft is NOT the best program for creating people, so we opted to just do scenes from the Passion Week AFTER the people had all left. Hopefully these give you a whisper of what is going on. Even more importantly, we had a delightful time working on these pictures (actually they did ALL the work while we reminded each other of the actual story events), and once again, the story of Jesus' supreme sacrifice for each one of us is becoming an important centerpiece in our Lent and Easter season – this time mixing hi tech with low tech.

And oh my, I had such a lovely follow-up to this conversation the next day in church, when the pastor shared the encouraging Bible verses in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15,

For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.

I read that to my grandson but he didn't quite understand the New American Standard version. So I've added the Message version as well:

Christ's love has moved me to such extremes. His love has the first and last word in everything we do. He included everyone in his death so that everyone could also be included in his life, a resurrection life, a far better life than people ever lived on their own. 

Then I shared with my grandkids that this is another encouraging reminder to live our lives fully surrendered to God during this season of Lent, as well as all year long. I added this passage to my cell phone, along with last week's Scripture, Ephesians 4:1-3.

Life so often speeds by too quickly. But tiny moments like these will, hopefully, be the building blocks that lead to lovely memories as well as leaving a sweet spiritual legacy of God's love in the hearts and minds of our children and grandchildren. (And lest you think my grandkids are perfect, they went from sweet peace to loud "sibling rivalry" ten minutes later. Sigh. Slowly but surely, and trusting in God, and one "building block" at a time, right? As Floss' "Pause in Lent" reminds me – I will "Fast from discontent; Feast on gratitude…Fast from negatives; Feast on affirmatives…" Be sure to check all of the poem out – it's lovely! 🙂 )

How about you? Do you have suggestions for other ways to share these vital truths with our grandkids of all ages during this season of Lent and Easter? We'd love to hear.

P.S. If you'd like more fun and creative ways to prepare for Easter with your grandkids, you might enjoy these past posts at SandwichINK for the Sandwich Generation:

• Looking for Ways of Leaving a Sweet Spiritual Legacy in Your Grandkids Hearts This Easter?
• It’s Time for the Sandwich Generation Granny Nanny and Grandkids to Work on Their Resurrection Easter Eggs  (This one has even more links to past posts)
• Lent Ideas and Meditations for Grandparents and Their Grand kids – Bible Verses on Forgiveness – Part 7 (Even more past post links!)
• The Trinity Explained to Children Using Easter Activities for Grandparents and Grandchildren
• Lent Music for Holy Trinity Projects and Activities for Grandparents and Grand kids
• The Sandwich Generation Roundup: Lent and Easter Ideas and Activities For Grandparents and Grandchildren