Illustration: One of my favorite short stories is “The Egg” by Sherwood Anderson. It’s about the recurring failures of a ne’er-do-well father, a man who goes from chicken farming to restaurant proprietor, to a balding poor man married to a small-town schoolteacher, to ambitious but naif performer of tricks and gimmicks involving deformed chickens and eggs. It’s a 10-page gem of a story about one’s spiritual blindness. The father does not understand what his son does, namely, the folly of his (the father’s) silly undertakings and ambitions. The father’s hands of ambition far exceed their grasp. And what ensues is just one humiliation after another. The son, an astute observer and seer of ultimate matters, is embarrassed for his father. The son, in short, both loves his father and is embarrassed by him. The father is a fool. He tries to be something he is not and is thwarted at every turn by forces arrayed against him. He is a man who kicks against the goads of design that God has written into the world. Rather than embracing reality and recognizing reality, he tries again and again to live in a made-up world where he is the creator and has power over others and the world, but he is frustrated at every turn.

Text: It reminds me very much of Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes:

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises . . . What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun (Eccl 1:2-5, 9 ESV).

Encouragement: When Paul was near concluding his letter to the Romans, he penned this:

For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope (Rom 15:4 ESV). Anderson’s masterful story “The Egg” is about those who refuse to admit the obvious and the tragedy that follows such refusal. There is, however, another way, but it calls for humility, repentance, and faith in the Father who knows best.