What 36 Eggs Are Teaching Me About Grace

I shouldn’t have left the eggs out there on their own but I was in a hurry. I quickly packed the car with groceries. I stacked 3 egg cartons on top of on another on the floor of the passenger side. 

On a normal day, I would have braced the egg cartons with something sturdy so they would not fall over. This time I forgot.

I hopped into the front seat and peeled out of the parking lot. I had places I needed to be.

I hastily took the first turn onto the main road. The inertia toppled the sky scraper of egg cartons. 36 eggs spilled onto the passenger floor. And then, because there is no partition in the front of a mini van, they proceeded to roll out into the aisle and onto the driver’s side and into the back seat.

36 eggs can cover a lot of ground.

I panicked. I began trying to grab them as they rolled past me, all the while driving in rush hour traffic with no obvious place to pull out and stop. But eggs are very tricky to catch.  They are very unpredictable. 

I was suddenly not in such a rush to get anywhere. I had become a person with a singular purpose: get the eggs home without breaking them. Speed no longer mattered.

Every traffic light I encountered I was forced to slow down well in advance in order to manage the eggs. When the light turned green I inched forward, ever so slowly. My fellow traffic drivers were not impressed. They felt no need to hide their responses. There was honking and displays of middle appendages and anger. To them, I was just someone getting in the way. Traffic can be unforgivable. 

I tried to tell them, to mime to them, what was going on. But how do you tell strangers that you have 36 eggs rolling around in your car? What exactly is the universal sign for that?

I wanted them to know that I was not a bad driver. I just had these eggs...everywhere. 

I think about that day often. When I see someone driving strangely or getting in my way - I think about those eggs.

What I have come to understand about other people is that everyone is living with 36 eggs rolling around their car, sometimes more.

Not literally, I hope. But everyone - in their mind, their soul, their body, their spirit, or their will.

Every single person - no matter how perfect that look on the outside, no matter how put together they seem, no matter what their strengths. Every single person has their own chaos, battles, weaknesses, distractions and struggles.

Every single person has hidden difficulties, or family troubles or relationship troubles or invisible/visible illnesses, or addictions, intrusive thoughts, doubts, pain, poverty, trauma, or grief. There are body issues and disappointments, mental illness and strife with those they once loved, negative self talk or unrelenting expectations on themselves or others. Some are parenting rebellious teens or a baby they just can’t quite understand.

And all these things get in the way of their ability to act "normally".  

Every. Single. Person. 

Yes- even that person you just thought about.

It can take all our focus. It can make us oblivious to the world around us. The eggs can be all encompassing.

The Bible is the story of people with eggs, lots of eggs. Each one trying to find their way in this strange world - fighting battles and odds that are against them. I am continuously surprised by how relatable the ancient stories are to our present day. Think up a problem - someone in the Bible has dealt with it.  The human experience has not changed that much over centuries and millennia.

But the good news is that the Bible is first and foremost a story of God’s relationship of love, compassion, and grace with these people. God has always known about the eggs. 

As we follow Jesus and seek to be sanctified and made like Him, we can learn to see the eggs other people are dealing with. As we receive the grace that has been shown us, we can learn to see others with grace. 

And maybe, just maybe, we can reach across the aisle, the pew, the hallway and the street to offer a helping hand. And in so doing we can hold onto an egg or two, lighten the load just a bit.

I’m not asking you to fix everyone’s problems. Jesus never asked us to do that. I’m just asking you to assume that there are 36 eggs rolling around on the floor of everyone else's car, eggs that you can’t see, eggs that need extra special care.

The grace we need is available from the Father, through Jesus, by the Holy Spirit.  We just have to be willing to ask for it. 

Maybe you are feeling like you have eggs rolling around, ones that you can’t bear to explain or show.
Friend, know that you are not the only one. I am out there too. And my guess is that there are billions more of us.

So you pray for grace for me and I will pray for grace for you. And we’ll try and not mind when we each drive slowly. And maybe, just maybe, we will all get home, eggs intact.