We all long for it, especially these days when things seem to get busier by the hour and more complex, especially for us older folks! We yearn for the old time ways of doing things, a time when you needed love and family more than you needed a new computer, tablet or phone. It was a time when pencil or pen were our only computers and a tablet was the paper we wrote on. We certainly couldn’t carry our phone around either. If we had a phone at all it was nailed securely to the wall of our house and there was no messaging waiting for us when we got back to the house.

Think about this when you are stuck in traffic or juggling the thousand things that must be done. Wouldn’t you rather be sitting on your front porch, sipping a lemonade and talking with your friends?

“It’s so sad,” she sighed, “Families just aren’t close anymore. This is true in my own family. My mom and dad live in Michigan, my sister lives in Oklahoma and my brother’s family lives in Minnesota where my family got started. I doubt if we would know one another if we met one day on the street.”

There is a lot of talk these days about “family values”. What do they mean? Do they mean just getting together with the kids once in awhile at the table for a meal, each family member eating something that came from McDonald’s? Or do they too yearn for a simpler time when a meal is cooked at home, a home that is their basis for all their activities. A home where Dad plays basketball or baseball with the boys as Mom and the girls work together getting dinner ready for all of them to eat. A home where Grandma and Grandpa, aunts and uncles are all welcome and evenings are spent singing around the piano or playing monopoly or some other table game.

That would save on gas too,wouldn’t it? Mom wouldn’t be known as the family taxi driver, taking the kids to who knows what. Instead, the kids would be home, playing with the neighbor kids in their own baseball game or doing homework on the dining room table.

In fact, family was all you could count on in the past. Back then you went to your family when things were wrong like needing money or help in any way. There was no welfare, food stamps there was no Aid for Dependent Children or government backed loans. There wasn’t much of anything except church and family. But we still made it and grew more self sufficient because of it.

Yes, we do yearn for the more simple ways and it is all up to you. You won’t go back to where there is no cell phone or computer, but there is a way for you to simplify your life. Just keep the kids at home more and have family meals. Play some games with them and have them play out in the sunshine rather than inside with the television or video games. That doesn’t seem too hard, does it? And, talk to your kids too, while you are at it. You can’t bring Grandma and Grandpa, aunts, uncles and cousins to your town to live nearby but you’ll be well on your way to a much more simple life!

I have a confession to make. I still have my Christmas decorations sitting out in my porch! Isn’t that awful? I decided quite awhile ago that I would clean my husband’s stuff out of his little house which he used all the time. He had all his tools in there and quite a few other things too. He died 4 years ago. It’s time I did something out there, don’t you think? Anyhow, that’s where I plan to put my Christmas stuff and that’s why I haven’t moved them. And here it is Easter week already.

I often wonder what the kids of today think of Easter. I asked a couple of them the other day and I got these answers: “I think it’s about candy. We sure get a lot of it on Easter, don’t we?” Here is another one: “I think it’s about Springtime. The trees are blossoming and, I don’t know I just feel different.” I like that one better, but both of them are wrong, aren’t they?

I wish everone knew how much God loves them but it’s hard to realize when every TV show talks about a different kind of love. Or we hear I just love ice cream, Toyota cars and that dress hanging there in the window. Love means just about anything these days but God’s love is real. He loves us so much he was willing to send his only son to die for us and rise from the dead letting us know he really is our Savior and he really took our sins away so that we can again know God and his love.

And that’s why we have an Easter. It isn’t a bunny and egg day or a day to wear a new dress. It isn’t a day to celebrate springtime either. ‘but we can be glad and celebrate because our sins are gone if we believe Jesus is Lord and we can go to heaven when we die. Isn’t that worth celebrating?