The Point of an Easter Egg
The point of an easter egg is that there’s something surprising inside. An image, a message, or a smaller program. An Easter egg has something you don’t expect. Recently, a developer found an Easter egg in the very first version of Windows (Windows 1.0 nearly 37 years old). It was encrypted in the Smiley Face image. Down at the very bottom. It listed all the people who developed that feature in Windows 1.
This practice - inserting hidden messages, images, or features - was frowned on at first. Later, Easter Eggs became a kind of signature: I made this.
Easter eggs almost always bring happiness.
What if we chose to regularly embed Easter eggs into our daily lives? Little things, unexpected things, that might bring people Joy? What if our communications with others surprised them and made them happy? I think we should try to make our own signature Easter eggs.
Of course, the Easter egg reference harkens back to the most important event of all Christian history. The Resurrection of Christ was the biggest Easter egg of them all. The Resurrection turned the tables on whatever history might have expected. In both history and our daily lives, what is inside can save our world. Set your eyes on a few Easter eggs in the coming days and weeks. Think about something surprising and genius you could do to flip the script for someone that needs it!
Maybe tomorrow is a good day to start? After all it is April fools :-).
P.S. Like so many things in faith (any faith, I think), culture often contaminates much of the meaning. A favorite term on Wikipedia (of which I’m a sometimes editor) is Disambiguation: to tease out the different possible meanings of a word. I think thinking people can Disambiguate the meaning of an event from the cultural garnishings. Easter, Easter egg hunts, and Easter eggs have vastly different meanings. If you follow Christianity, hopefully you’ll make sure that Christ remains in Christmas and the Resurrection remains in Easter.