Within most offices, people align to a particular description. There’s usually someone who leaves their dirty cup in the sink or on the bench. There’s the person who is always late, the one who takes longer lunches than allocated, the one with the messy desk or the one who cannot tolerate any mess anywhere and tidies everyone else’s spaces in order to feel comfortable. Actually, I made that last one up. I’ve met plenty of people who have a spotless, organised desk but never anyone who extends that to organising their colleague’s workspaces, which is a shame.
In every office, there is also a joker. This year, in my workplace, he or she put half an easter egg on everyone’s desk. Despite how random it looked at first glance, it was a well-planned gag. They got a bunch of solid mini easter eggs, cut them in half – oh, how I hope they cut them and didn’t bite them – then rewrapped them in foils. Mine was wrapped as a Mars mini egg. The reason I know it was well planned is that you need to have double the number of chocolate foils to wrap them up in once you’ve halved them, and nobody had an unwrapped half egg on their desk. My guess is they ate a packet of mini eggs, saved the wrappers, chopped up (I’m still hoping) another pack of eggs, and rewrapped them using the wrappers left over from the first packet. As I said, well planned.
You might be wondering what my office designation is. I don’t drink tea or coffee, so I’m definitely not the person who leaves my dirty cup lying around. My desk is sometimes tidy and sometimes not, depending on how busy I am. It’s not the most decorated either, though I do have a little Playmobil warrior dude on my desk. He holds a shield and a sword. I intentionally hunted him down so I could dress him each morning in the Armour of God (Ephesians 6:10-18), committing it to memory as I go while also praying its coverage over myself. I touch his shoes of peace and his belt of truth. His breastplate is painted on, but I look at it and repeat, ‘breastplate of righteousness’. I put the helmet of salvation over his long white hair that resembles dreads like mine once it’s mostly covered. I clip his shield of faith to one hand and put a long sword of the Spirit in the other. Then, because he isn’t explicitly designed to teach one the elements of the armour, I snap his little gauntlets over his wrists and declare them to be the gauntlets of grace. I made that up, but it seemed to suit him and the process, so I’ve kept saying it. I just have to remember never to say it out loud when telling someone else what the armour of God includes. Not that it’s a bad thing to include grace – to others, and that which God extended to us.
That was a great little side quest, wasn’t it? I still haven’t told you who I am in my office or gotten to the point of this piece of writing. I’m the office gifter. I wanted it to be ‘surprise gifter’, but, apparently, the giggle I let out whenever someone directly asks me if I’m the person who left whatever it was on the desks gives me away. The problem with being known is that I get asked if I left certain objects on the desks when that particular gift wasn’t from me.
So far this year, I’ve given everyone a homemade fridge magnet that says Valentine, with a heart-shaped lollipop attached. That doesn’t sound so special, except the word valentine is created within the verse of John 3:16. Then I gave everyone a KitKat with a little piece of paper congratulating them for surviving the first 10% of the working year. I love numbers and patterns and used to talk myself through the boredom of my first job as a checkout operator by dividing my shift into segments. Each segment I survived was one I didn’t have to do again. If it was a four-and-a-half-hour shift, I’d split it into three 90-minute parts. Once I’d done the first hour and a half, I’d tell myself I only had to do that segment twice more and I could go home. If I was really desperate, I could break it down further into nine 30-minute sections. That’s a bit harder to keep in your head, though. Whatever the pattern, knowing how long the working year is helps in feeling you are achieving something and moving closer to the always-appreciated holiday breaks. At my previous job, on bad days, I’d remind myself that each half-day finished was 10% of that working week done.
This Easter, my first easter season with this company, I handed out small packets containing an easter egg and a little saying. The eggs were the sort you get in clear plastic egg cartons, which you distribute around the house for a hunt. They have brightly coloured foil wrappers and are hollow inside. To the packet, I added a slip of paper that showed an easter egg that had been opened to expose its hollowness. On the paper were the words ‘Something to think about as you eat your hollow egg’ and part of the lyrics from Hillsong’s Man of Sorrows: “Behold the empty tomb. Hallelujah, God be praised. He’s risen from the grave”.
I know many people relate well to the Bible and can recite verse after verse, but I can’t. I never have been able to. But what I can do is remember God’s word through song. When the minister is giving his sermon, my head connects all the verses he reads out to their associated song lyrics. That’s probably not too surprising, given that I love singing. But I also love writing, yet I can’t remember specific verses. I don’t quote lines from movies either – I only remember the general gist of it all. It used to bother me that I couldn’t answer any of the quizzes where someone would say, “Where do I find this in the Bible?” However, now, in my fifties, I no longer care. I’m not competing with anyone over how I remember God’s word. If I experience the delight of songs constantly floating through my head rather than lines of verse, I’m happy with that. I have come to realise I know much of the Bible, but not in the more conventional way of reciting it word for word. I can recognise the theme instead and tell you a song that contains those words. For the rest, there’s always an online Bible easily accessed through my phone or computer.
You might be interested to know that several people in my office told me they had never made the connection before that the tomb was hollow, and so are easter eggs. Whether they made that connection through my words, an image, the song lyrics, or even the combination of all three isn’t relevant. What does matter is that they now see a way to associate the gift of Jesus’ resurrection with the secular easter eggs given this time of year. Mark 16:6 (English Standard Version) says an angel tells those who have found the tomb both open and empty, “…Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him”. Luke 24:12 (ESV) reports, “But Peter rose and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; and he went home marvelling at what had happened.” John 20:6-8 (ESV) tells us, “Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed”. Yes, I did google all of those, but that doesn’t make the words any less true. Every version of the Bible will tell you the same story: the tomb was empty. Jesus is risen!
As one of my co-workers left, he thanked me for the egg. I responded, “You’re welcome. Enjoy the celebration of the empty tomb”. Chocolate gives you a fleeting moment of pleasure as it melts in your mouth; God has given us an eternal gift. I hope this Easter, as you eat those hollow eggs, you are constantly reminded of love and sacrifice and grace, given by God to you.
A Glorious Mess 