Peeps, Reese’s Eggs, and Jelly Bellies: What’s Your Favorite?

(ROCKWALL, TX — April 7, 2019) It’s like Christmas in pink and yellow!!!!! Bunnies, eggs, lilies, baskets, crosses, glitter, Easter grass in psychedelic colors…it’s a sensory overload! Chocolate bunnies & Peeps galore decorate the shelves. Kroger is trying to catch up.

My GRANDS that live here are teenagers now. Over time they refined the skill of blowing eggs. I have an egg tree displaying how their skills have developed; skills of egg dyeing, egg decorating, egg glittering. Our eggs have crosses, ribbon laced into designs, string art, tissue art…there’s even a golden egg. The boiled ones are for coloring and hunting. The blown ones are for saving and occasional filling with confetti and for throwing. The plastic ones are for filling with candy and pennies. There has even been folding money added in recent years since rattling pennies don’t cut it any more.

Actually, my personal favorite are the Reese’s Peanut Butter eggs. There’s something about the combination of chocolate and peanut butter that satisfies my palate.

My mouth is watering as I’m typing this!

We’ve even made Resurrection Cookies. They are little meringues you whip up, drop onto a cookie sheet and if you’ve got the patience to leave the door closed, appear as an empty tomb the next morning. Great teaching.

It’s difficult for my mind to wrap itself around all this celebration in pink & green.

I visited a prison this week. I met men whose lives have been altered by foolish choices, tragic family situations, destructive relationships and continuous cycles of incarceration. My need for more egg glitter paled in comparison to the needs of these men to whom I sang. The walk I made Thursday night through numerous gates before arriving at the prison chapel was a stark contrast to my stroll through Michael’s.

But in actuality, the heart & soul needs of those in prison are no different from the shoppers at Hobby Lobby. Chocolate bunnies & Easter baskets bring no Eternal Life. I feel being imprisoned might even bring you closer to the recognition of your need for the One who walked out of that tomb on Resurrection morning. Being stripped of ALL except the clothes on your back has a way of sobering you to acknowledging your GREATEST need…that of forgiveness and restoration…the true message of Easter. Jesus said, “I have come that you might have life with abundance.” Not an abundance of Peeps in various colors, but an abundance of rest, reconciliation & joy. These cannot be bought, but have been purchased and offered freely to you every moment since Resurrection Sunday 2,000 years ago. Interested?

That’s a VERY good word.

By Paula Lively. Paula is a Volunteer Chaplain at Broadmoor Medical Lodge in Rockwall. She is a VERY retired RN who loves serving the residents at Broadmoor. She and her husband, Fred, have lived in Rockwall for 15 years.

Our monthly print edition is delivered free to ~22,000 homes in Rockwall and Heath, TX.