Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Easter Eggs at Christmas

Image by Annette from Pixabay

At Christmas, do your thoughts turn to Easter eggs?

Probably not, unless you’re an avid player of video games or a fan of certain movie franchises.

In the cinematic and computer worlds, an “Easter egg” is a secret message, image, or feature hidden in software, games, or films.

With video games, an Easter egg might be an unpublished feature or hidden property of the game that is normally hidden from the public eye. It can only be accessed by certain button combinations that are not common knowledge.

Easter eggs inserted by filmmakers in their works might involve a jokey detail or an obscure reference to a previous movie by the same auteur. Only the most alert audience members catch them.

For instance, famed film director Alfred Hitchcock had a penchant for appearing in cameo roles in his own movies. In 39 of the 52 films he directed, he left “Easter eggs” consisting of himself in blink-and-you-miss-it bit parts.

Are there any “Easter eggs” to be found hidden in the Christmas story in the Bible?

Actually, there are.

If you read the Scriptures closely, you’ll find that there are foreshadowings of Easter sprinkled throughout the accounts of Christ’s miraculous birth.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Conspicuous Camouflage

Image of blue tang fish by Tewy via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-2.5

Whenever I did something wrong as a little girl, I thought I had a surefire way of escaping my parents.

I would hide behind a large potted plant we had and close my eyes.

Somehow, I thought that my parents wouldn’t be able to see me if I did this. Unfortunately for me, their eyesight was a bit better than I’d bargained on.

If you look at the natural world, you’ll find that I’m not the only one who often thinks they can’t be seen.

Take the blue tang fish, made famous by its cartoon equivalent in the Pixar movies “Finding Nemo” and “Finding Dory.”

Like a few other reef fish, this aquatic animal is blue and yellow. To other fish and to its predators, the blue tang is perfectly camouflaged. To them, its yellow markings seem to disappear against similarly coloured corals, and its blue body blends in with the shade of the water.

There’s only one problem:

To snorkelling humans, the blue tang sticks out like a sore thumb. Far from being camouflaged, this fish’s dramatic colours are incredibly conspicuous to our eyes. Why is that?

It’s because our eyesight is very different from that of undersea creatures. The particular trio of cones in human vision is especially good at discriminating blues and yellows.

So what is hidden to other fish is glaringly obvious to us.

I think God’s “eyesight” works in a similar fashion.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

When You Can’t See God’s Face

Image by Sumanley xulx from Pixabay

I don’t know about you, but I still have trouble recognizing acquaintances when they’re wearing a mask.

One of the unusual things this pandemic has taught us is just how much we rely on a person’s whole face to clue us in to who they are.

When someone wears a mask, we’re missing half the visual information we normally get from their features. It takes us longer to cotton on to who it is.

We waltz past someone, glance at the top half of their face above their mask, and think they look vaguely familiar.

“That’s not so-and-so, is it?” we wonder, as we keep walking.

Too late, we realize it was so-and-so. We can only hope they weren’t offended that we sped past them without a hello.

This pandemic has been unnerving in many ways. Mask-wearing has robbed us of some of the crucial information we need to identify people quickly. Not only that, masks also deprive us of the ability to see people smile.

Do you ever feel like you’re only seeing half of God’s “face,” as it were?

Has hardship obscured His features from your sight? Do you long to see Him smile upon you again?

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