A Good Egg: Lesson One
Who knew a person could learn so much from a boiled egg?
I was on for doing the children's feature in church the
other week and I generally like to do object lessons for these
events. So it was Saturday afternoon and I still hadn't come up with
an experiment to do that would demonstrate why it is important to
solve problems in peaceful ways. I skimmed through the kids' science
magazines but couldn't find anything so I hauled out my book of
family fun boredom busters. And there, in the rainy day section, was
this experiment with a boiled egg.
Here's what the book said to do:
Get a peeled boiled egg, a fairly narrow-mouthed glass
jar, a bowl of cold water and some hot tap water. The goal is to get
the egg to go through the neck of the bottle without smooshing the
egg. Of course, pressing it through won't work. So what to do is
place the egg in the bowl of cold water. Fill the jar with hot water
and let it sit for about a minute or so to let the jar heat up. Then
pour the water out, quickly placing the egg, tapered side down, into
the mouth of the jar. The egg will slowly get sucked into the jar,
“with a satisfying thunk,” said my book.
So I diligently followed the directions, and to my
ridiculous, child-like amazement, it worked exactly like it said!
And I thought, this is perfect! This shows exactly why it is
important to solve problems peacefully.
Here was a problem that seemed impossible to solve, or
at least impossible to solve in a non-forceful way: trying to get a
soft, boiled egg into a jar with a too-small mouth without breaking
the egg.
When I first placed the egg on the mouth of the jar, it
seemed like nothing was happening; this experiment wasn't working.
But as I waited longer, I noticed the egg slowly, slowly starting to
slip down. And then I felt this almost overwhelming urge to push
things along – this was taking too long; maybe if I just gave it a
little nudge, I could speed things up. I didn't have to press the
egg very hard while it was still in the neck of the jar to realize
that any interference on my part would, in fact, crumble the egg.
I managed to restrain myself from pushing the egg long
enough to watch the egg slowly, agonizingly, squeeze through the
neck, getting elongated in the process, until I heard that satisfying
“thunk” I was promised! And there is was! In the bottom
of the jar! Where there had been no possible way to get that egg
into the jar, now there it was!
How like life. There are problems that arise that are
difficult and seem impossible to solve without force or aggression or
violence. Maybe not necessarily physical violence, but violence to
another's spirit, or our own, or to our environment. And then along the
way a peaceful possibility opens up. But it is so agonizingly slow,
and maybe it's not really working anyway and we want to give up, or
just take some extra measure into our own hands and nudge the process
along. But if we are patient enough to allow peace to do its work,
we are granted a solution. Yes, with peace, it often takes longer to
see the resolution to a problem, and it requires more persistence and
more restraint, but the results are more satisfying, more
long-lasting, even better than we could have imagined.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither
are your ways my ways”, declares the Lord.
“As
the heavens are higher than the earth
so
are my ways higher than your ways
and
my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah
55:8-9
* * * *
The
corresponding Bible story for this feature was Gen 26:11-33. If you
want to know the science behind the egg experiment, the hot air
inside the jar is less dense (and thus at a lower pressure) than the
cooler air outside. The difference creates a suction that pulls the
squishy egg through the bottle neck. (p. 196, FamilyFun Boredom
Busters).
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