Lights and Pictures

I'm so visual that I knew using candles with lent readings at home would be meaningful to me. But I had no clue how powerful the lenten light readings John and Noel Piper made would be. Wow! Amazing. We use them the week leading up to Easter and place small tea lights from the dollar store on a plate. Each night Andy reads the devotional printed off from desiringgod.org and we blow out a candle each day through Good Friday until Easter Sunday when we light all of them again to show that Jesus beat sin and death and rose again!

Andy reading

A light is snuffed out after each reading

Jim was fascinated

Jesus is alive. The tomb is empty. Light of the world has come!!!

close up of candles next to our homemade tomb



Here's Noel Piper's intro explanation:
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5). But for a while it seemed as if the darkness was overcoming—for a long while.
Your seven candles symbolize the Light of the World—the Light that was God’s glory and that illuminated God for us—the Light that, in the end, seemed to have been darkened. As we move through the season preceding Easter, the candles are snuffed out one by one, until all are dark on Good Friday, when Jesus died and the earth was covered with shadow. Darkness apparently had won. The Light of the World had been extinguished. It was finished.
But NO! Easter brings resurrection! Life! Return from death! The Light has won and all the candles burn as we praise him—the Light of the World, the Bright Morning Star, the Glory of God.

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