I enjoy travel, and my favorite souvenirs are generally photographs I’ve taken and stored on my MacBook. When I do bring something home, it’s more likely to be an everyday item common to the country, or some sort of local craft.
Intricately hand-painted eggshells (kraslice) are a popular craft in the Czech Republic, especially during the celebration of Easter. Though some can be quite expensive, the bookstore at the International Baptist Theological Seminary had some very artful eggs for just a few dollars each.
So, I brought three of them home with me, each in a plastic box, then padded with plastic bags and carefully cradled inside a pair of shoes in my suitcase, with socks on either side.
I’m happy to say that all three eggs made it safely home.
One of the eggs was intended for display in my office at Campbell. Confident in the egg’s sturdiness, I kept it in the wad of plastic bags and stored it in my briefcase for the brief trip to Buies Creek.
When I arrived, it looked like this.
The egg survived 5,000 miles in an airplane despite the worst that airline luggage handlers could do to it.
I tried to carry it 23 miles and turned it into fragments of its former self.
I thought about trying to glue it back together, but quickly gained an appreciation for the last line of “Humpty Dumpty.”
Some things, once shattered, can’t be put back together again … not just eggs, but things like relationships, and reputations. If those things are valuable to us, we have to handle them with care.
Some things weren’t meant to go in a briefcase.
Professor of Old Testament at Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, North Carolina, and the Contributing Editor and Curriculum Writer at Good Faith Media.
