For many years we have felt unprepared for Easter. It just seems to leap up out of nowhere and last year I decided enough was enough. We intentionally prepare our hearts and homes for Christmas and so we want to equally prepare our hearts and minds for Easter, arguably the more important of the two holidays. I’ve spent the last year slowly mulling over Bach’s St Matthew Passion and how to adapt it to the Lenten season. We follow a book guiding families through Handel’s Messiah for Advent, so I copied the author’s general idea and came up with a plan to guide us through Lent by slowly listening to St Matthew Passion. On Tuesday night before Ash Wednesday, we collected palm leaves out of the yard and burned them to ash. Brian talked about death and the weight of our sin and mortality as we watched the leaves disintegrate into a gritty pile. The following morning we started our listening guide while again contemplating our brokenness and deep need for redemption. Each morning we light a candle, read the scripture associated with the song selections for that day, listen, and pray. On Good Friday we will somberly end the oratorio with the death of Christ, circling back to Handel’s Messiah by listening to several movements highlighting Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday. Brian and I worked together to find some wonderful poetry and read-alouds to enrich the days we aren’t listening to any song selections.

The whole goal is to keep our minds singularly focused on the coming of Easter Sunday. We both hail from low church backgrounds making the practice of Lent new to us. We certainly knew about it, but neither of us observed it. We’re already feeling edified by reading through Matthew 26 and 27 at a snail’s pace while listening to Bach’s powerful work, and we’re praying the Lord uses it in the girls’ lives and hearts, too. This year Easter will not sneak up on us!!