A Crown, a Throne, and Freedom

Every year at the Easter Eggstravaganza, we always do some fun music, a simple story about the Jesus of Easter, send the kids and their families out to do the egg hunt, and then they gather back in the building to count their “booty” and get some popcorn and juice. It’s always a meaningful time.

I always like to do a character or some kind of object lesson that the kids and their parents can relate to. For 2014 I used:

A Crown, a Throne, and Freedom

What does a king wear? A crown.
What does a king sit on? A throne.
What can a king do? Whatever he wants, freedom.

We want to be important.
We want to be powerful.
We want to do whatever we want and we don’t want anyone telling us what to do.

We want FREEDOM.

While we don’t have kings in America, we do have a lot of important, powerful, freedom-loving people… don’t we? We want to be our own King… we want to be our own god… and when we don’t get what we want, we feel:

Un-important – like we don’t matter.
Weak – like no one cares about what we say.
Enslaved – because people won’t let us do whatever we want.

We feel frustrated, annoyed, angry, jealous. We talk, scheme, covet, and sabotage. We try, try some more, and go to sleep at night exhausted and unfulfilled.

This is the American way: try to be your own king (but it will never happen).

Enter Jesus.

He doesn’t do any of the things we think he should do:

He doesn’t fight for a crown of importance.
He doesn’t demand a throne to be powerful from.
He doesn’t demand his freedom but other people’s freedom.

Jesus went almost the opposite way. When he became king:

What does Jesus wear? a crown.
What does Jesus sit on? a throne.
What does Jesus do? whatever he wants, freedom.

Instead of a crown of importance, he wore a crown of thorns: humility and suffering.
Instead of a throne of power, he was nailed to a cross in a display of weakness and suffering.
Instead of freedom, he laid it down for the sake of the freedom of all mankind.

You see, Jesus showed us that going after importance, power, and our own idea of freedom will always and only lead to frustration, anger, jealously, and annoyance.

Instead, Jesus offered us the gift of importance (by putting others before yourself), his power in suffering for this world, and freedom from having to try really hard to get what we think we want, when all we really need/want is Christ.

So the only way for life to work is to seek a crown of thorns, a throne that is a cross, and freedom limited by Jesus’ love.

My daughter drew these two pictures later on that day: