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The Original Resurrection Eggs Show - Barbara Craft
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript
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Resurrection Eggs: Creatively Sharing Christ
Guest: Barbara Craft
From the series: Resurrection Eggs: Creatively Sharing Christ (Day 1 of 1)
Bob: In 1994, a grandmother by the name of Barbara Craft heard about a way to use plastic Easter eggs to share the Easter story with friends, neighbors and children. She fell in love with the idea.
Barbara: The idea that I like about this is you’re getting the Bible in front of them—you’re getting the Word of God. This is not just a story. We’re using great things to tell a story. This is something—they may remember the donkey, the nails—but it’s a way of engraving the Word on their heart and fulfilling Deuteronomy 6—you know, it says to talk about these things when you get up / when you’re sitting in your house. This is, to me, what this project does.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, April 2nd. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We will hear some FamilyLife Today history today as we hear about the first time Barbara Craft shared with us the idea for what became Resurrection Eggs®. Stay tuned.
1:00
And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition. We have people who will pull us aside, from time to time; and they’ll say to us: “You know who you guys ought to interview? You ought to have so-and-so as a guest on your program.” We often get some great recommendations from listeners who suggest someone that we ought to talk to.
Dennis: We do. I agree.
Bob: We try to dig and say: “Okay, what would our listeners be most interested in? What would be most helpful? What is the best kind of practical, biblical help we can give them related to marriage and family?”
I remember when somebody on our staff, more than 20 years ago, pulled me aside and said, “Do you know who you ought to interview?” And they told me about a grandma, who was on staff, here at FamilyLife. I have to confess to you, I thought, “Yeahhh, we’re probably not going to do an interview with a grandma who’s on staff.” You know?
2:00
Dennis: This is not just any grandma. This is Barbara Craft. She is a woman of the Word. She is a wife, a mom, a grandmother who has taken her role seriously. When she found out about a way to be able to bring the reality of Easter into her family—but also the families of her neighbors—she jumped all over it.
Bob: This was a craft project she put together: —a basket full of plastic eggs—each one with a symbol of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection.
Dennis: There must have been 25 to 30 different eggs in the basket that she brought in.
Bob: I just thought: “How are we going to talk about plastic eggs on a radio program? People can’t see it. It’s a nice idea—“
Dennis: Well, we always are interested in helping families have an outreach to others.
Bob: And that’s ultimately why we decided, “Let’s go ahead and have Barbara on.” I remember thinking, in the back of my mind, “You know, if the interview doesn’t go well, we don’t have to use it.” Well, the interview went fine; didn’t it?
3:00
Dennis: It went so well, in fact—just a little bit more to the story. I don’t remember exactly how it occurred; but as we were interviewing her, it all made so much sense. Somehow, we put our heads together and said: “You know, we really can’t put these eggs in a basket and ship them in the mail to listeners who want them. I would think people would like to have a dozen of these eggs of their own.”
We thought: “What if you took a carton and filled it full of these eggs—with the objects that are in them that tell the story of Easter—that help a mom and dad, grandma / grandpa, or help a young family share Christ in their neighborhood with the world’s largest Easter egg party? What if we had something like that?” Well, we put together a few of them—
Bob: We put together 3,000 sets.
Dennis: Were you out there?
Bob: I was not out there.
Dennis: I was out there—at our kids’ junior high cafeteria. We worked all Saturday. I prayed over those 3,000 sets—I said, “Lord, God, I pray these don’t end up in our warehouse for the next 20 or 30 years.”
4:00
Bob: We were putting little donkeys into one egg, and putting coins in another egg.
Dennis: A rock representing the stone that was put in front of Christ’s grave in another, and then, of course, there was the easiest one to assemble of all—which had nothing in it.
Bob: That’s right, the empty egg which represents the tomb. And here’s the thing—we did the 3,000 sets; and we also made available a list so, if anybody wanted to create their own set, they could just—“Here, you need to find a donkey, and you need to find a little pebble, you need to find the coins…” and all that. “Get your own plastic eggs.” Well, we had people calling us saying, “We want multiple sets of those.” Those 3,000 were gone like that! That first year, we wound up assembling an additional 7,000 to send out to our listeners.
Dennis: And I’m going to tell our listeners—I was not there on the second Saturday they had to be assembled. In fact, I think we found someone—a bunch of teenagers to be able to—[Laughter]
5:00
Bob: [Laughter] You scheduled a weekend out of town when you heard that was happening, as I remember. Well, today, we thought it would be fun for our listeners to go back and hear that very first interview, from 20 years ago, when Barbara Craft—that grandmother who was on staff, here at FamilyLife—came into the studio and brought the very first Resurrection Eggs that we had ever seen.
[Recorded Interview]
Dennis: Our table is covered with eggs here. It’s really quite festive here, Bob. Tell us: “What do all these eggs represent, Barbara?” and, “How did you come up with the idea of teaching about Easter through an object lesson like eggs?”
Barbara: Well, I didn’t come up with the idea. I’m not a creative-type person. I’m one that sees an idea and I can go with it. I was in our home, teaching ladies how to do a craft project—using paper bags and paper twists—and mak...
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