Proper egg placement

There’s just something fun about seeing kids hunt for their Easter eggs.  Of course, you sometimes have to separate the different age groups, since the two-year-olds need their eggs right where they can see them easily, and the eight-year-olds need them hidden with somewhat more ingenuity—like in places Mom finds a week later…but not with her eyes.

I remember doing the coloring egg thing with my kids, although I’m not sure how often that still goes on.  There’s so much fake stuff out there which makes it quite bit easier, plastic eggs and such.  If you trip and drop them, they don’t tend to break as easily, (and they don’t smell if they go unclaimed, a definite plus.)

Thus the old adage of putting all of one’s eggs in a single basket, which had more to do with the farmer’s wife than with Easter eggs, I suppose.  Dropping the basket would mean no omelets for breakfast that morning.

Which is kind of the point that aging warrior/leader of the Israelites, Joshua, is trying to get across to the people before he makes his final exit, in his famous statement:

“But as for me and my family, we will serve the LORD.”

The context of this thought is the Hebrews past history of following after the idols of the nations among whom they lived as slaves.  Joshua is warning them that the environmental temptation will still exist, and “what are y’all going to do about it?”  Their response:

“So we, too, will serve the LORD, for he alone is our God.”

I find this statement unfortunately informative, and even more unfortunate in that I can relate to it today. 

The people say, “he alone is our God”, not “he alone is THE God”.  As in, He alone is God alone, by Himself, there is no other.  Everything else is fake.  Period. 

Perhaps I’m reading something into this passage that they didn’t intend, but it still occurs to me that we also like our options just as much today.  My husband, for example, had someone tell him along the lines of “I tried Christianity for a while but it didn’t give me what I wanted.”

Didn’t fit your perceived need?  Doesn’t connect with your current experience? A bit uncomfortable around frequented company?

Options.

Of course, options are a defining quality of being human.  In the Christian worldview, we were created with choices, including the one to obey God and remain in intimate relationship with Him, or not.  And we know how well that’s gone through the years.

Interestingly, Jesus also had options.  He didn’t have to leave paradise and walk in the dust and die on a cross to fix my stupidity.  Remember the fiasco just prior to His capture?   

“Don’t you realize that I could ask my Father for thousands of angels to protect us, and he would send them instantly?”

And the writer of Hebrews later makes this comment about Jesus’ decision:

“Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross…”

And to think that we are that joy. 

Jesus put all of His hope for our salvation in His Father’s plan through His own cross and resurrection. As king of the Universe, He had other options, definitely. But He had no other focus, no Plan B. 

No other basket.

So I likewise choose to put all my eggs into His.

Joshua 24:15,18; Matthew 26:53’ Hebrews 12:2 Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.