Before I tell my stories, I want to explain that in Germany we have an "Easter Bunny" that goes around and hides coloured eggs and sweets for the kids to find them. Well, in my days we looked for eggs and chocolate, these days the kids get iPhones ...but I did not want to complain. I wanted to tell you two Easter Sunday stories.
Number one goes back to when I was a child. We did not live in a house with a garden, so the Easter treasures were hidden somewhere in the flat - which made my mother find some very old chocolate egg in the settee half a year later, but that is another story.
Anyway, one Easter custom was the walk with my parents. My sister and I were delighted: in the grass to the right and left of the path there were coloured sugar eggs. And chocolate eggs. We collected them, brought them back to our parents and ran off to find more ...
And even years later, when I knew that my father had dropped the treasures while we were walking along - also dropped those, that we already had found, a second or third time - it did not change the Easter Miracle.
Searching and finding was more important than owning. And I think the most important treasure was the experience that you can find all sorts of good things next to your way - and they are even more precious when someone who loves you dropped them there.
The second story takes places decades later - my son was about four or five and he was a very rational little fellow. Santa Claus ... no, never, that was Daddy . And, of course, he was highly sceptical about the Easter Bunny, too.
That year we had come back from a short holiday by car. We had driven through the night and when we arrived early Easter Sunday morning, my son was peacefully snoring on the back seat. So my husband jumped out of the car and quickly hid all the sweets in the garden.
Then we woke up our son who was firmly convinced that he had not slept and had had total control over his parents' actions.
He spotted the big chocolate Easter Bunny sitting under a tree immediately ... and who describes the wonder when he found more eggs and chocolate things under flowers and strawberry plants .
"Now I do get some doubts..." - he said.
Even years later, when he realized how it had worked, he insisted on having been awake all night thus having been the witness of a true Easter Miracle.
Maybe we humans need "miracles" from time to time. The belief in someone holding and guarding us. Someone loving us.
I wish you all a hopeful Easter - remember, we celebrate the victory of life over death on this day.
