Tip of My Iceberg

Easter egg hunts are the stuff of dreams.

Children’s dreams. filled with candy eggs, marshmallow peeps, chocolate bunny ears waiting to be bitten.

The pursuit can be just as fun.

Back-to-back egg hunts for the grands made for a sugar-filled weekend. The first with 1,200 of their closest friends, with eggs all over the lawn for the littles and a bit better hidden for the more mature egg hunter.

Easter afternoon we had an egg hunt at our house. 108 plastic eggs, filled with a variety of candy, hidden obviously and not so obviously.

We had four active hunters with about twelve “helpers” encouraging them to try different places. Several were college students who hadn’t hunted for eggs in some time. They had as much fun finding them and eating the contents as the littles did.

We ended up eight eggs short. It’s why candy eggs trump real ones. Finding those boiled babies a couple of months down the road wouldn’t be pleasant. These will be sweet surprises when discovered at some future date.

Ryken, at three, was motivated by the jelly beans. He found an egg in a shoe, emptied it of its contents, and put the candyless egg back where he found it.

Nora found the egg. Much to her chagrin, it was empty. Not expected. Certainly not appreciated.

Who wants an empty egg?

For many, Easter is all about those eggs and candy.  A springtime ritual that comes when everyone is sick of winter.

Isn’t that all it is?

You’d think so when 700 million peeps and 16 billion jelly beans are sold during this season.

A significant number of folks don’t really know what Easter is about. That it’s the celebration of the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Historical. There are 39 other documents from Roman, Greek and Jewish historians apart from the Biblical accounts of the empty tomb and Jesus’ resurrection.

Dealing with an empty tomb has been the issue for centuries. It’s central to the Christian faith–if Jesus didn’t die and rise from the dead, then He’s like any other good person who’s tried to help people.

He’s not just a good person. He claimed to be God.

That’s what is bothersome to so many. He bugged the religious leaders of His day because He didn’t act like them and claimed deity. He engaged with the broken and rejected, healed the unacceptable, loved people well.

And took the burden of all our evil on Himself to prove it.

The tomb was empty because death couldn’t hold Him. He paid the sacrifice for us and then defeated the power that holds us all in bondage–our own sinful natures. He rose from the dead to new life to give those who choose to believe in Him the same hope.

These bodies will die, but those who know Jesus are promised eternity in heaven.

The empty tomb frustrated religious leaders and the Roman Empire. They tried to explain it away and couldn’t. This one act changed the way many have lived–and hoped–since.

What will you do with that empty tomb?

It can’t be ignored like an empty egg.