How do you celebrate the Easter season?

Early in our marriage, my husband told me Easter is his favorite holiday- and he wanted to really celebrate it.

I was at a loss.

The day Jesus rose from the grave is an important one, but somehow “Easter season” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “the most wonderful time of the year.”

At a loss as to how to celebrate the season of anticipation of Christ’s death and resurrection, we sought to create meaningful traditions. Every year, we attend a Good Friday service. Often, we’ll pick a relevant book to read together during spring. We decorate sugar cookies while watching The Ten Commandments and sometimes we dye eggs. On Resurrection Day, we worship at church and eat ham later, reading the old, old story too.

Even with these traditions, I confess most of the weeks before our remembrance of Christ’s death and resurrection, I don’t think especially about the Gospel, what was finished on the cross, or the hope of the empty grave.

This year, Asheritah Ciuciu’s devotional Uncovering the Love of Jesus is helping us focus, celebrate, and reflect throughout the Easter season, also called “lent.”

Thoroughly grace-filled, Christ-honoring, and Biblical, the devotional provokes thought and praise for all the love Jesus showed us through His perfect life, His sacrifice, and His victory over sin and death.

Some things I appreciate about the devotional include:

• Focus on grace, not works; the gospel, not religious structure.
• Walks through stories and examples of Jesus’ love throughout Scripture
• Call to sacrifice sinful attitudes and habits in order to love others, rather than giving up “stuff”
• Concise, creative, and adaptable format for families with or without kids, and individuals

Quotes I appreciated include:

• “We are called to love…not so they will apologize to us. Not so they will see how spiritual we are in loving them even though they’ve wronged us. But to love them simply so they will experience God’s love anew.”
• “Personal relationships with messy people is the way of love.”
• “Jesus doesn’t require steadfast faith to ensure His steadfast love.”

If you’d like to marvel, treasure, and explore Jesus’ remarkable love throughout the Easter season, I recommend this devotional.

<I received a copy of this book from the publisher for the purpose of this review.>

You can find a copy of Uncovering the Love of Jesus: A Lenten Devotional on retail websites like Amazon, Moody Publishers, or even Walmart. More info available here.

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