"Well, the sugar can look like a newt if it wants, can't it Christy?" Marjorie looked up from her mixing bowl, and I peered back over the rim of my teacup.
"But it's not a newt, darling."
"Oh, cakes are people too! Why shouldn't it? You know, I think that cooking is poetry."
I smiled, but since I knew precisely what she meant, how could I help but agree? "Yes, darling. It is, rather."
And I meant it. There was a comfortable silence then, while Burgee stirred her lamb cake and I sipped my mint tea. Every year we have Easter with Polish friends, and it is always a feast. This year, Marjorie and Charity are baking off against the other family's boys, to see who can make the best lamb cake (literally a cake baked in a lamb-shaped mould, iced, and scattered with cocoanut flakes, having two tiny chocolate chips for eyes) for the centerpiece of our Easter Feast.
"Why are we having the Feast at our house this year?" I asked. "We always have it at the other house."
"It's because the girls want to win the Easter Egg Hunt, for once." Mama replied. "They think that if the dads hide eggs here, Brandon won't wind up with all of them."
Mama is small (five foot two) and fragile-boned, and spoke from the corner of our deep tapestry couch, in what I call the Prussian Blue Room. Light glowed behind her out of a mahogany bookcase. I could read the title of just one from where I sat
... Systematic Theology, by Grudem. How entirely appropriate it is that that one book should dominate the shelf, and consequently the room.
I sighed happily, and put my head in Mama's lap so that she could stroke my hair while reading email on her laptop. A new picture which Daddy had bought her, a scene of Easter bonnets, beamed down from the mantel. I glanced sideways at the curve-backed fainting couch, then up and around: perfect blue, clear and twilight-deep, on the walls; gold and blue tapestry couches; mahogany, and yellow lamplight...
"I belong here," I said. Then I frowned. "And yet... I don't."
Mama thought that I mean school. "You would belong here if you were living here, Sweetheart."
"I know... but it almost seems too easy. Everything is established here; there are no overwhelming hardships."
"True."
She read her email, and I lay still, thinking. That was last night. Tonight, Marjorie and I made lamb cakes and watched
Philadelphia Story in the kitchen.
"Will you help me clean up, Tisy?"
"Yes, darling."
When I come home I have to put myself in a mindset of coming to serve, and not to be served. It's very easy to think that I'm coming home just to be home, where I will be safe and coddled. Today, serving meant getting up at 7:30 AM to go and be timekeeper for Marjorie's co-op debate rounds. The event lasted until 2 PM, and Marjorie progressed all the way to the semifinals. They'll duke out the championship tomorrow. I wanted to laugh at myself--me, who doesn't particularly care for debate, sitting there as timekeeper while my father, brother, and sister judged, and my sister and two cousins all made it to the top rounds. I come from such a debaterly family; what a wonder it is that I never developed a taste for it! But I did enjoy today, even if I laughed to find myself spending the first day home at a debate tournament.
Serving today meant staying up with Marjorie to bake and talk and watch an old movie, and before that I curled Charity's hair and dyed it bright blue (which will wash out) for a party. Tomorrow it means going shopping with Nana. For Sunday, it means wearing white sandals and an appropriate Easter outfit for Mama's New England sense of proper Ressurection Sunday attire.
And I love every minute of it. There's so much
more, somehow, in giving up what you'd rather have and being disciplined and loving others. If I did it as dry duty it would be worse than a toothache, but instead I do it from increasing joy in Christ, love for him and for my dear ones and for his people. The result is delight. This is Good Friday, you know. I have the best of all possible examples, my Lord, who came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
I have been taught to preach the Gospel to myself every day; therefore it is not strange to be thinking of the cross... only more poignant, because this is THE night. I love Christmas, but I love Easter best. There is no romance on earth so great as this one, no drama, no tragedy, no story of any sort more real and achingly sorrowful... and achingly beautiful... and awesomely glad.
On a night dark as this one, the Light of the world was given up to darkness, and conquered the darkness and the cave, and he is the Daystar.
On a night cold as this one, the heat and passion--oh, how literally the
passion!--of Love himself came to redeem the frozen ones from their bitter lonely exile.
On a night angry as this one, the sacrifice of the Lamb satisfied God's just wrath, and sinners in the hands of an angry God were caught up to the heart of the Father by those same hands, now reconciled to him in Christ.
On
this night, over two thousand years ago...
"Why do we eat bitter herbs, O my father?"
"To remember our bondage, my son."
Oh yes, bondage indeed; bondage to sin.
"Why do we wear sandals on our feet, and have our staffs in hand, O my father?"
"To be ready to go to the Promised Land, my son."
Yes, yes! The City, the Celestial City, the new Jerusalem! And I shall see it...
And there shall not be any night there, and no eternal sleeping, but eternal breathing and living--by which I mean eternal worship.
Come soon, Lord Jesus. The waiting is very long, and my restless heart yearns to see thee, and to be home, at rest in thy heart.
