In the Margins - 4/8/26
Things I Read
I've been reading The Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman. An oldie but goodie. The Training Year men are reading it together.
Things I Listened To
For Easter, we have a playlist with two songs on it, and we play them over and over — Was it a Morning Like This? by Sandi Patty and Easter Song by Keith Green. It's not Easter at the Durso house unless these songs are blasting full volume at 7am.
Things I Watched
Another tradition we have is that on Good Friday or the Saturday before Easter, we watch YouTube videos of sermon clips, sermon "jams," and interview segments where preachers like John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, and D.A. Carson talk about the cross. This year, Ashley and I were surprised at how fruitful doing this has been with our family. Now the kids like watching these clips and we hear them saying, "I never understood that before, but that's so cool!"
Here are some of our favorites:
Alistair Begg: "The Man on the Middle Cross said I can Come"
S.M. Lockeridge "It's Friday" and "That's My King"
D.A. Carson: "The Ground of Our Assurance"
Things I Thought
After this Easter weekend, I've been thinking about how instructive family traditions can be. Ours have evolved over the years and become significantly helpful for the kids' formation.
Good Friday
We watch the YouTube playlist
Attend the Good Friday service
Try to read something about the death of Christ together.
Saturday
Ashley and I build a tent in the living room, fill it with candies and snacks, and we listen as a family to the Jesus Storybook Bible from the birth of Christ to the end of the New Testament — about two hours.
We dye Easter eggs.
After dinner we each take a few small papers, write down some sins we're aware of in our lives on little pieces of paper, and I nail them to a little wooden cross I made years ago.
Sunday
We blast the songs
Ashley sets up a trail of Easter eggs that lead to their Easter baskets, which have some surprises.
The sins we wrote down on the cross are gone - and we celebrate forgiveness
We go to church together as a family (unusual for me since I'm usually there early)
Visit family in the afternoon.
I'm thankful for the way these traditions have been shaping us, and I'm praying our kids would come to see the preciousness of our Savior and the significance of his death and resurrection.
Quotes to Ponder
"You may never be able to forget the years of wandering, the many sins of which you have been guilty. But that which gives peace is the knowledge that God will never recall them again. He has blotted them from the book of his remembrance, and he has done it in righteousness, for the account is completely settled. The debt is paid." — H.A. Ironside
