Easter eggs smell of balmy autumns, when the cool begins to dilute summer causing a brief and luscious climate fitting for the comfort of both T-shirts and ugg boots—a time to relish embracing a hot cup of tea while basking in an afternoon sunbeam, yet also embark on all the bushwalks unthinkable in the bite and burn of either midwinter or high summer.
Easter eggs smell of a carefree season missing from this year’s calendar.
This autumn I ate my hoard of too much chocolate in a strange new world.
I am home: home-working, home-schooling, home-making. Loss, uncertainty, and fear batter our hearts. Family and friends fill our screens but not our arms. Weeks feel repetitive yet unprecedented, days hectic yet hugely unproductive, time taut yet floppy. I like being home. It is a privilege to be able to shelter during this time. But home is hard.
Today I sat in the sun in our backyard, cut egg cartons into flowers, and painted them bright colours. I was trialling the children’s activity for an upcoming Crafterzoom. The deep blue paint was gorgeously glossy, catching the sun. I dipped in my brush and experienced a gooey satisfaction as I slathered it across the grubby cardboard in smooth silky strokes.
Crafting embodies all my favourite threads of Biblical theology: redemption, renewal, resurrection, and rest. It answers in microcosm all the gritty existential questions often stirred to the surface from the slurry of our souls during crisis.
Who am I?
What is my purpose?
Why is the world the way it is?
How is the world supposed to be?
The act of harnessing the wild and waste around us to create beauty and abundance to share with all is our Genesis commissioning as God’s beloved children. This is the identity humanity rejected when they distrusted God as the source of all goodness, and the calling restored to us in Jesus, whose last words recommissioned us to fill the earth with God’s abundant love.
None of us has done a pandemic before. Uncertainty abounds. But who God made us, why God made us, and the resurrection God promises us in the present and future remains unchanged. God is rebirthing Eden in our sin-broken world, and if we choose to share in Jesus’ death and new life we are rebirthed as renewal agents who multiply Christlikeness amongst ruins, seeding justice, beauty, and compassion in all spheres of our life: our work, our homemaking, our family and neighbourly relationships. And in our art and craft.
Easter eggs smell of a strange season of reflection on death, love, and salvation.
So today I sat in my sunny garden snipping egg cartons into new creations.
