The Easter Egg Hunt of Life
I remember my early hunts. Real eggs, boiled and dyed them ourselves. A fair amount of anxiety if someone should find more than me. The incredible tension until someone found the Prize Egg (only one, in our day) containing 50 cents, and O what Joy! - if I did!
Then there was the transition from Hunter to Hider, and a certain perverse pleasure in seeing your younger siblings desparately seeking and...NOT finding, becoming the anxiety of seeing your own kids WALK RIGHT PAST the treasures you wanted them to find.
Now I'm making a new transition, thanks to my condition: Old-Timers. I'm developing a new devotion to the Hereafter, as in, “What am I in HERE after?” I've identified some stages of Old-Timers, having to do with stuff. First came “I'm sure I left it here”, followed by “I think I left it here”. These first two show that I still had some of my mind left, but that quickly moves into the next stage: “How did that get in here?” which is hard on the heels of: “Where did that come from?”
What really surprises me, though, is the pleasure that comes from these discoveries. I mean, I've been “finding” my glasses every day since I was nine, but now that the search is harder, the reward is greater. Who knew such joy could be waiting in such...humble circumstances. Now I think I finally can sympathize with the woman who lost a coin and swept her whole house, looking till she found it. (Luke 15) If I ever call you to rejoice with me over finding my favorite pen, now you'll know why. I'm in the Old-Timers Easter Egg Hunt every day!
Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Luke 15:10
For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost. Luke 19:10