In these parts we get a blanket four days off for Easter – Good Friday and Easter Monday being public holidays. It makes for a nice four day weekend, something we have desperately needed. Hubs and I intended to go away, but somehow it just didn’t happen, and when we finally looked for somewhere to stay last week, it was just the dregs left over. I would rather stay at home than be somewhere daggy and boring, so, here we are. I love just being with my husband; this morning we washed the cars, so romantic.
We tend not to do anything special for Easter in terms of its religious significance. Back when I attended a more traditional Baptist-type church (which I loved, for that time) we always had a service on Good Friday, and an extra-special one on Easter Sunday. Our church now doesn’t do anything special. We don’t observe Lent or any of the feasts. The reasoning behind this is that quite often we’ll use those things to ‘be spiritual’ at that time, or to feel that we are closer to God for the doing of those things. I guess we see that it is more important to live a daily life of remembrance and honouring God for His supreme sacrifice, than to focus on it for a period of special days. We try to build into our lives a daily feast and passion for holiness. We still, however, teach the children at church about Easter and we are having a picnic tomorrow as a church rather than a meeting. We will ‘do’ church by enjoying each outdoors, and I’m sure an Easter egg or two may make an appearance.
I like to have little traditions, though, and I am building a few for our family. We tend to have hot cross buns for breakfast on Good Friday, and on Easter Sunday I’ll follow my family’s tradition by serving hard-boiled eggs. I may even colour them the way my mother used to. I’ll never forget the vivid memories of waking early on Easter Sunday morning, and heading out into the garden with my siblings to hunt for eggs. My mother always hard-boiled some eggs in different colours, and I remember sitting on the lawn, dividing up the spoils, and eating those eggs which had their own special Easter flavour.
Easters as a teen tended to revolve around youth camps. Quite a few of these would involve a silent Sunday morning march up the hill, and a sunrise service, followed by a breakfast full of talk and laughter back at the camp. Good times.
I’ve lived in a lot of places in my life. I was born in South Africa, and we lived for the first five or six years of my life in a semi-rural area, with about ten acres and a lot of trees and animals. We then moved, I think, to a rental, then another home and finally a big house in the suburbs. (Life was luxurious in those days for many South Africans.). When I was eight, my parents (one English, one South African) decided to give their four children a childhood of freedom, not the menacing, cloistered, violent childhood they saw looming in years to come in our beautiful land. They moved us to Australia, a move that had profound effects on all of us, particularly my older sister and I. Moving is stressful for children, let alone emigrating to a new land. You lose all that you hold dear, all that is familiar. For us, we moved to a place where we had no extended family for thousands of kilometres.
I remember always feeling a little ‘different’ – the way I talked, behaved, the life experiences I had had. We had always travelled a lot overseas as a family in my growing up years, and I think I had quite a broad worldview even then. Once here in Australia, we moved a couple of times again, involving new schools each time. When I look back, I think I can count about eight different schools that I attended.
Once I finished university, I took off for London, where I lived for two and half years. Those were some of the best years of my life – meeting new people, relying on God like never before, travelling to new and beautiful lands. The world seemed so big and so small, both at the same time. I discovered that beneath the cultural and geographic exteriors, we are all the same, really. We all eat and drink and wash and play and talk and laugh and love and dream. We all have plans for a family and a future, and we all work for similar goals. Around the world, people are just people. We are not that different from each other.
Coming home, I found that no-one really wanted to hear about my experiences. Life goes on for people, and our own lives and experiences are what we are most involved with. I remember feeling a sense of restlessness, a sense of not belonging. Was I South African? Australian? English? My heart was in all those lands. I fell in love with many places around the globe in the following years. Now, when I land in Singapore or Cambodia there is a distinct sense of ‘coming home’. Many places have a small piece of my heart.
I’ve often thought about patriotism. Having led the life I have, and living in three different countries, no one place feels like my home country. I believe this is not a bad thing. The bible tells us that He has put eternity in our hearts, that our existence here is but a blink of an eye. If we feel passionate about our earthly home, and love it at the cost of loving other nations, we are forgetting that the Lord has told us He has given us all nations. He tells us to go out into the whole world, sharing the Truth of His Son. I’m not saying we should not defend our nations against agressors. I’m just wondering if a national pride prevents us from loving the nations as they should be loved. If our fierce pride in the land of our birth prevents us from living as though this is only our temporary home. If it leads to us thinking that our nationality and culture is the best one, not just one of many that God loves equally. Having that sense of not really belonging completely anywhere means that I live with the knowlege of eternity, that my life is in heaven, not just in this one nation here on earth. It means that if the Lord tells us to go – it is a little easier to leave ‘home’ because our identity is not in a place but in a Person.
Filed under: life
- Right now my husband is vacuuming the flowers. Yes, that would be flowers. They dropped a little pollen on the table, so I guess he is pre-empting the next occurence of this event.
- I bought some three-quarter length jeans yesterday, and the waist is a little higher than I’m used to (I did not notice this yesterday.). When I sit down, the waist comes above my belly button. I feel like I’m being strangled. Is this weird?
