Easter!

To you, I wish a blessed Easter.

And, by that, I don't mean that you have a wonderful dinner complete with ham and deviled eggs* and carrot cake, in the dining room on the good china, surrounded by dressed-to-the-nines family and friends.

There's more than a good party that I wish for you.

I don't mean that you enjoy watching your kids collect eggs from around the backyard, while you smile until your cheeks hurt, take way too many pictures, and realize you might burst our crying because these are times you wish you to store in your memory and watch over and over again like a good movie.

For sure, I wish Hallmark moments like that for you.  But, there's more.

I don't mean that the weather cooperates and your new outfit gets lots of compliments and the service is nice.  Even though, those would be wonderful wishes for all of us.

There's simply way much more to it than that.

The blessing involves work.  The work of surveying this past week and taking it in.  Breathing deeply the depth and width and enormity of what Christ did for you.

The blessing means, if you don't know the story leading up to this day, that you will take the time to learn it.  And share it with your family so they know there is an amazing journey full of small events that lead to the double crescendo of Christ's death and resurrection.

Mostly, I pray you inhale the meaning of Easter so very deeply that you are at the point of passing out in anguish and gratitude and humility.  That this, the highest most holy time of the year, would be so important to you in 2012 that you would feel it settle into your marrow.  And stick. 

I wish you the blessing of GETTING IT.  Once and for all.  That you would never blithely approach Easter week again.  That Easter would become your favorite holiday and knock Christmas and Thanksgiving out of contention because it becomes so personal, what Christ did for YOU.

Grab Easter and hug it until you ring all the meaning out of it.  Until you are drenched with sweat from effort.  Until you feel Christ sitting in your life reminding you that you were worth every step to the cross.

That is my Easter blessing on you.

*Oh, the lovely irony of eating deviled eggs on Easter Sunday.