My boys are currently sitting around the table “worldbuilding.” They are drawing fantastic maps and alien races and developing their end-of-the-world scenarios where the inevitable “Chosen One” will need to arise to save the world from utter destruction.

Meanwhile I’m sitting here looking across my windows at the sixteen pictures my kids and I hung up earlier this week showcasing the life of the Lord: His birth, His baptism, His miracles and teachings, His crucifixion, His resurrection, and His glorification.

The real end-of-the-world-averted-by-the-Chosen-One scenario.

But we haven’t always portrayed it that way.

In previous years, especially when my children were young, I had a tendency to shorten the story. We celebrated the Lord’s birth (Yay Christmas!) and then jumped up to His Resurrection (Yay Easter Morning!). We zeroed in on the cheerful parts and glossed over all the pain and hardship. While it may have felt more child-friendly, without context, the Easter story seemed diminished by the abridgment.

It has been powerful over the last few years to place the happy moments back into context. Easter morning is so much more poignant when seen after the nightmare that was the trial and crucifixion.

I came across this quote a few weeks back and was reminded of just how truly epic the Lord’s First Coming was:

(A)s heaven has been formed of the human race, from the first creation until now, so it will be formed and filled up from the same source hereafter. It is indeed possible that the human race on one earth may perish, which comes to pass when they separate themselves entirely from the Divine, for then man no longer has spiritual life, but only natural, like that of beasts; and when man is such no society can be formed, and held bound by laws, since without the influx of heaven, and thus without the Divine government, man would become insane, and rush unchecked into every wickedness, one against another.

But although the human race, by separation from the Divine, might perish on one earth, which, however, is provided against by the Lord, yet still they would continue on other earths… It was said to me from heaven, that the human race on this earth would have perished, so that not one man would have existed on it at this day, if the Lord had not come into the world, and on this earth assumed the Human, and made it Divine; and also, unless the Lord had given here such a Word as might serve for a basis to the angelic heaven, and for its conjunction.

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Wishing you all a blessed Easter Holiday!