I Remember Pantyhose

With so many women on the Internet (Jellyhead, Heather, Moogie, etc.) all talking about shoes this week, it’s only natural that my thoughts should turn to pantyhose.

Now, I hardly ever wear pantyhose myself — they bind — but years ago, I used to buy some every few weeks.

I bought them to use as a visual aid when I taught Bible lessons at a rescue mission. Actually, the pantyhose themselves, I gave to Ginny; but the pantyhose containers came in handy to illustrate one of my Bible lessons.

Haven’t seen them around for years but back in the 70s, there used to be a brand of pantyhose called, I think, Leggs. As a marketing ploy, that company packaged their pantyhose in large, hollow, white plastic eggs which measured about four inches in length.

It was the plastic eggs I used to teach about the new birth Christ offers.

People are like eggs.

We all look the same on the outside. Hard to tell much difference when you look at us, but some eggs have life inside, others don’t.

I displayed two identical eggs which I’d prepared beforehand to the men and women at the mission.

The eggs look the same, feel the same, weigh the same — and every one of them is potentially alive.

If an egg does not have life within it, it goes rotten.

I’d recruit a volunteer from the audience and crack open one egg on his head (my Bible lessons were serious affairs). That egg proved full of black dripping goooo. (That got folks attention).

If there is life within, (I’d crack open the second egg to reveal a cute fuzzy yellow chick)…

Jesus said, that He came that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly. Paul said that without Christ living within us, we are dead in trespasses and sins. Jesus said, He stands at the door and knocks; He promises to come into us if we open that door…

Eggs eventually crack open.

So do people.

Life within — or putrefaction.

And that life comes from the outside; the egg does get life by itself. It must come from a higher source, a living source.

You can’t tell whether an egg is living or putrefying by looking at the shell… You know, a lot of people look at Christians and say there’s no difference between us and a nonbeliever.

They’re right.

On the surface, there isn’t.

We both, godly and ungodly alike, wash our cars, watch the ball game, change the baby, wait for payday… No external difference.

The world finds this disappointing. They expect more of people who claim to walk with God. They think we should glow in the dark or something. They point with glee when some tv preachers runs off with the money, or the choir leader — or both… The world expects Christians to be different, to be a cut above, to fly higher…

Well, no egg can fly.

Yet.

But there will come a day, a day when all eggs crack open, when our rottenness or our living beauty will be revealed.

The difference between people and eggs is that eggs have no choice as to whether they are rotting inside or growing up to fly.

Eggs have no choice.

We do.