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Monday, April 5, 2010

4/5/10- Easter Egg John 10:10

I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

(Left- picture of dove eggs laid outside my deck on Good Friday).

Eggs have for centuries been seen as a symbol of the resurrection.  The egg is a symbol of potential life and hope.  But it is also a kind of tomb- inside the egg the bird cannot see, cannot fly, cannot move much.  The bird must hatch out of the egg in order to experience life.  Christ was placed in the tomb, but the tomb could not contain him.  He broke out and is alive forever. 
The egg also symbolizes our own lives.  Without Christ we are alive as a baby bird is inside an egg- with potential life.  But when we experience Christ we are able to fully realize what life is about.  Jesus came that we might have meaning, purpose, and hope in life.  Abundant and eternal life, does not begin after we die, but now.
In Greece eggs are colored crimson to remind the people of the blood of Christ that takes away our sins and allows us to live.  In the Ukraine and Poland, eggs are decorated painstakingly (using the pyanski method).  An egg is a beautiful symbol of new life for us. In the Jewish Passover (seder) tradition, an egg is there to symbolize how persevering through suffering.  The words at the seder meal is "all other things when boild become soft,but the egg become hard."  We are to be like the egg, tougher in the tough times. 
But for Christians, the symbol of the egg is not just to persevere, but that there is an ultimate award- life beyond the tomb.

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