Easter Egg

I've had in my lifetime a few of what I call minor "mystical" experiences. The latest of which was today, what I call a wacky one. I was in my easy chair writing a talk when I heard Bam! on my back- door window. "Oh great," I thought to meself, "that group of anti-Frankenstein townspeople is after me again." But when I opened the door, all I saw was a small bird lying on its back near my doorstep. Its eyes were half-closed, its heart was beating rapidly, but it otherwise didn't move.

Not wanting to have a wildbird possibly bite me, I grabbed it by wrapping it in three feet of white paper towel. And knowing it soon would die, I put it onto its back, still wrapped, and on the grass. Then I placed a few pieces of sod and two clothespins onto the edges of the towel to keep it down. Just the bird's head peeked out of the wrapping.

I returned to my chair and continued my reading and writing. Twenty minutes later, I reached the place in my reading of John's gospel at which Peter and John reach Jesus' tomb on Easter morning, enter it, find it empty, and handle the neatly folded linen cloth which had covered Jesus. At that point, I had the notion to take a break, go see the bird, and prepare to bury it.

To my surprise, what I found was the long white paper towel completely unfolded in the grass, the two clothespins lying perfectly parallel to each other at the head of the towel, and the bird gone.
"Well, well," I said, "the resurrection I just read a minute ago in the gospel, with the 'linen cloth' neatly unfolded instead of folded."

The moral of the experience struck me: Either believe in the Resurrection of Jesus or don't underestimate the strength of a merely-stunned bird.