"Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death that like Christ was raised up

from the dead by the glory of the Father,

even so we also should walk in newness of life."

Romans 6:4

Years ago, my husband and I wrestled with the Easter Bunny and the secularization of Easter. We came to a wonderful solution that redeemed the holiday and the traditional egg hunt thanks to a story published by Focus on the Family. “What was in Jeremy’s Egg” By Ida Mae Kempel.

Ida Mae tells the story of Jeremy Forrester a twelve year old boy, born with a terminal illness. Jeremy's teacher, Doris Miller told the class the story of Jesus, and then to emphasize the idea of new life spring forth she gave each of them a large plastic Easter egg to fill with something that showed new life.

The next morning 19 children returned and placed their eggs in the basket on her desk. When it was time to open the eggs, Miss Miller found Jeremy’s egg empty, she laid it aside. Jeremy spoke up. “Miss, Miller, aren’t you going to talk about my egg?” She replied,” But Jeremy-your egg is empty!” He said softly,” But Jesus’ tomb was empty too.” Latter that year Jeremy died and his class placed 19 empty Easter eggs on his casket.

Jeremy’s story provided a wonderful lesson of Christ's victory over death and his gift of eternal life and saved countless hours of stuffing tiny high calorie candies, and useless, plastic toys items into plastic eggs. At the end of our egg hunt children select prizes from a prize table. Everybody wins; just like we all won when Jesus rose from the dead.