Rain, rain go away...

One of the best days of my life happened on the weekend before Easter. Our church was planning an Easter egg hunt for our community. We had about 3,ooo eggs, the jumpy inflatables, food, great give aways, I mean the works. It was going to be amazing. Then around Wednesday of that week we had bad news. The weather report was for severe storms. Our church rallied together and we began to pray. We knew that this egg hunt needed to happen. Not only would it be a lot of fun for the kids in our community, but we were going to present the Gospel! Well each day we would check the weather, and each day nothing changed.

That Saturday morning we woke up to a down pour. I mean it was raining cats and dogs! But my sweet husband would not be derailed. He just knew that we were suppose to do this egg hunt. So he called the workers for the event and had them meet him at the football field up at the high school where we were going to do this. They spent a couple of hours in the rain hiding eggs, setting up the booth, laying out the prizes, and cooking the food. In hopes that by the time they were done the rain would have stopped. Well when they were finished it was still raining. Then when 9:00 rolled around I loaded our kids up in our van and headed to the egg hunt. My kids were in the back with their baskets and umbrellas asking how we were going to hunt eggs in the rain. I had no idea.

At this point the rain has slowed down to a slight drizzle, but dark threatening clouds loomed in the distance. When I got there I told Jason that this was crazy and dangerous. I mean what if some one got struck with lightning! There were several families that had come and were waiting in their cars to see if we were going to have it or not. Jason finally decided that enough was enough and that we would have to claim defeat. So he told the on lookers that we would just have to cancel and that he was sorry.

Well my kids were just devastated to say the least. They began to cry and I began to make promises about what a good time we would have hunting eggs at our house...so on and so forth. About that time the rain stopped and several more cars pulled in. Jason could not turn people away while the sky was dry. So he rallied everyone together and said that while people are here lets do this! So we did.

Our Children's Pastor told all the kids about Jesus and how he died for us. Then we let the twenty something kids that had stayed hunt down all 3,000 eggs. I mean their baskets where overflowing, kids where stuffing eggs into their pockets, in their mom's purse, if it would hold something it had eggs in it.

But that's not even the best part. The next Sunday was Easter Sunday and service had come and gone with out really much ado. Over lunch I was kind of grumbling to Jason about how on Easter Sunday of all days a person should give their life to Jesus and how I didn't understand why no one had. I mean our friend Josh had baptised like over 100 people that day. That's when I heard Grace ask, "What do you mean get saved?" Jason explained to her that it meant that you believed that Jesus was the Son of God and that He had died to wash all our bad choices (or sins) away and that a person who got saved was asking Jesus to forgive them and to always be their friend. " Oh," she said " I did that last week."

"You did!"
"Yea, when Pastor Jeff was telling us about it at the egg hunt he said close your eyes and raise your hand if you want Jesus to live in you heart. So I put my hand over my heart ( she is reenacting this by the way) and said 'Jesus I want you to take my bad choices away. Then I lifted my had up to Him and said 'here Jesus I want you to have my heart' and I gave it to Him to keep."
Well at this point I am in tears. My sweet little girl really got it. And in her simplicity she knew what most of us adults have a hard time getting. Its about saying sorry about our bad choice and giving Jesus our heart to hold. Because lets face it he does a better at job keeping it safe than we do.

Well my husband sat down and talked to her to make sure she really understood what it meant. Which she did. I can tell you there isn't a day that can match my baby girl giving her heart away to Jesus...except the day the I did. I am so grateful that my children are choosing to follow Him!

Now I think what if we had sent everyone home, cleaned up the eggs, and said 'oh well'. What a shame. Because I would not have that dear memory. Sometimes I think we let rain get to us and we never press on to something we are suppose to do. So my advice is lets play in the rain!