Another Easter is past, and once again I marveled at the splashy-colored Easter eggs and baskets — all manufactured in sturdy plastic! This twenty-first century seems to be updating a lot of the “old ways,” but I still recall some of them.

It was a sunny spring morning, and the long walk to the school bus seemed shorter than usual. The reason had to be the Easter egg hunt that would headline my school day.

Our class would rush the morning work and the routine lunch on the cafeteria tables so we could get to the big event. High school students would volunteer their study hall time to take the baskets of eggs to hide them on the playground. It would be a BIG hunt because grass never grew on the playground, and there were just so many eggs one could hide under the seesaws. That meant we would go beyond the playground into the tall grass and weeds.

The goose egg would be hidden last and with the most care. After all, it was the grandest of all eggs and meant an instant money prize. All the while the eggs were being hidden, we were hiding our eyes with heads down. The giant windows facing the playground were too great a temptation to lure peeks if our arms weren’t wrapped around our heads on our desks.

The teacher would attempt to keep order as we exited to the hunt, but it was always a challenge. At the signal, every child tore out for the playground edge via the seesaws which did little to hide the eggs’ presence.

Maybe I would do better this year. I was a year older and a little faster. The older kids had always beaten me to the tall grass and the goose egg, but somehow I felt this was my year to win.

My older brother, who was already waiting at the end of our driveway shouted, “Hurry up, I hear the bus!” That meant run, so I switched gears and tore down the drive. Our teacher had instructed us to bring only three dyed eggs, so as I rushed toward the bus, my basket of three eggs danced and one escaped with a hard plop on the gravel. As I groaned and leaned over to pick it up, the other two rolled out of my basket, and now my groans were three-fold.

My beautifully, artistically dyed, special-eggs-for-the-school-hunt were now cracked into mosaic pieces of egg shells. The screech of the rumbling bus’s brakes were the only thing louder than my agony and introverted wails.

The ride to school was dismal, and so was the egg hunt. I knew my eggs would have won the ugliest award, and I didn’t find the goose egg. However, Easter morning made up for all the failures and disappointments that life could ever offer because Christ had won the greatest victory. Death had been defeated!!

Jesus was and is the TRUE Treasure, and I didn’t have to hunt for Him. He came looking for me!

Letters to Camille Anding may be sent to P.O. Box 551, Brookhaven, MS 39602.