Chocolate Eggs

The moment finally came, the spring equinox, the part of the year where the light begins to overwhelm the darkness in the Northern Hemisphere and all the birds start singing love songs. There was a day a few weeks ago where the cafes first opened their doors and put chairs and tables onto Plochingen's cobblestone market street and every child between the river and the top of the mountain went down to the local park (mine included). I saw new friends, sympathized with fellow parents and found out someone had waxed the slide when my brave daughter landed on her bottom three feet (one meter for all you continental Europeans, one metre if you're the writer of the technical English book I use) in front of it. The sun stayed up later, giving everyone color and smiles. (It's not all fun, of course - right now the trees are taking their revenge on my using them for fuel and shelter and lesson plans by warring against my sinuses)

Next week is Easter, and I intend to bite into a big fat chocolate egg (and finally check my Facebook account - what's new?). Here in Germany, they're usually filled with egg liqueur (the taste makes this American think of the Christmas nog), though I hope to get some good Cadbury egg in the mail. You know, the tasty treats that rot your teeth on contact and taste like love mixed with sugar. In any case, I waive my palm in glad anticipation.

These are the feelings of new life: taste, smell, sound, sight, touch. It's appropriate that Christians confiscated pagan fertility symbols for our Easter parties. We eat the eggs and hug the bunnies and then, still shaking from sugar highs and feasting, we go to church and shout, "The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!" Life renewed. Resurrection. New birth.

This is good news. No, this is wonderful news. Wonderful in the literal since, and I find it especially grand here in Western Europe where people have told me they love the feeling of wonder but refuse to believe in wonder itself. After all, how could anyone rise from the dead, the way Jesus did, the way his closest followers risked their lives to say he did.

It means that things like death, suffering, injustice and evil, results of the fall, however they got here, don't have the final say. These things, present as they are to our senses and our newspapers, as real as they are to our lives, especially those who face the worst of it, do not lord over us. This is wonderful news.

It also means that, however messed up we are (and make no mistake, we are) that there's something about us, in our flesh, in our spirit, in our soul and all we are, that God loves and wants to preserve. God sees it, made in his image. He loves us enough to send his Son to die for us, to take the penalty for our sin, and to raise us with him. Jesus' rising means that we will also rise. God wants to renew us and preserve us, for his love, for his unending pleasure.

This holy week, it's worth stepping into a church to observe the worshippers, the smell of spring and new life in their nostrils, celebrate the wild coronation of Palm Sunday, break bread on Maundy Thursday, mourn death on Good Friday and revel in Resurrection on Easter Sunday. If you find you can't believe in wonder, it's a good week to give it a shot. The awakening flowers, the jubilant birds and the chocolate eggs invite us to do so.