The Big Surprise

It was the biggest Easter egg hunt I had ever seen in Augusta, Kentucky. 

The yard in front of high school stretching from the double front doors to the railroad tracks on Third Street would soon be overrun by my elementary school buddies.

At the blowing of the whistle, we were off and running to find every egg possible, all tucked away in grass tufts and around the trees and slides of the playground. Mixed among the hard-boiled eggs were plastic ones with nickels and dimes. That was a lot of money—a dime could buy a Green Lantern comic book at Appleman’s Drug Store on Main Street. It was a grand day for any third-grader. The best things in life seem to carry a sense of discovery: a serendipitous snatch of insight...a treasure in a field...or a plastic egg with fifteen cents. A big surprise.

Years later, a 20-something young man with pony-tailed black hair and bellbottom jeans sat in a church for the first time as an adult. Most of the congregation was older—at least in their forties. The music wasn’t familiar: an Easter cantata...not even close to what he played every other night in bars with his fellow musicians with whom he lived and scratched out a living together. After watching people raise their hands and pray out loud to Someone who seemed familiar to them, he began to question his worldview.

Cynical, independent, agnostic, and lonely. When the preacher offered a simple heartfelt introduction to the One who beat death—Jesus the Christ—something strange happened. He was sure the people next to him could hear his heartbeat. He didn’t think “This is what I should do,” but rather, “This is what I must do.” Cornered by Irresistible Love, it seemed as if it was surrender or die. At least of embarrassment. He was up on his feet asking for help. And then a flash of discovery: Jesus must be real...why would he want to know Him so desperately?

I remember it as if yesterday. If you had told me what would follow the next 50-some years after that Easter, I’m not sure I would have believed it. What a trip. To this day, I still catch myself pondering The Big Surprise. The God of the Ah Ha!

Easter is discovery. It is women startled not to find a corpse to be covered in spices, but an empty tomb where secret hopes had been nailed to timber two days earlier.

A Big Surprise.

If I had written the story as a disciple, I would have made myself look better. But the apostles flaunted their disbelief. They weren’t just politically incorrect with the story from the wild-eyed women...there was simply no more faith on which to hang anything. Peter and John ran the distance to the borrowed tomb. And in true guy-fashion, John notes that he outran him.

Surprise.

Then again, why look for the living among the dead? When Jesus did appear alive—no, something more than alive—shortly later in a locked room, an amazing discovery was made. That handful of fear-filled Jews was breathed on with the courage of the Lion from the tribe of Judah—Jesus the Messiah.

Surprise.

No longer the suffering sacrificed lamb. And they would carry His message of discovery and new life to their own horrific deaths. Something radically changed their lives...these lambs became lions as well. It was quite a discovery.

Today my life is filled with routine. Writing reports and answering emails. The same series of meetings each month. The mundanity of normal life. Each day marches on to the irrepressible drumroll of life.

That’s okay. It would have killed me when I was twenty. But that was before I met the Big Surprise.

Dave Workman | The Elemental Group

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.   I CORINTHIANS 15:3-8

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