Every Easter, when I was little, we dyed chicken eggs.

My mom poked holes in the ends. Then, bent over a bowl, we would blow till our cheeks burned and we were dizzy, pushing all the insides out. When nothing was left but the shell, we soaked the eggs in dye and put them in baskets to decorate.

Even before the resurrection, the Jews used eggs as a part of their Passover story to represent the new life God gave them after slavery.

Beginning around the thirteenth century, Christians took the egg from their Jewish roots and begin staining it red to celebrate Jesus.

But the colored shell is only a sliver of the story.

That round, yellow, nutrient-rich inside is really what the egg is all about. The white liquid that surrounds it, the albumen, is the yolk’s cushion. The chalazae, the two strings on either end, are the yolk’s stabilizers. The membrane and the outer shell protect the yolk.

Jesus knows the outside tends to preoccupy people. Religion is that way. The outer things we do — our righteous acts, our obedience to God’s law — are important. But that’s just the shell of the more important thing, the heart.

Living out God’s love is what Jesus came to accomplish. God’s law is fulfilled when our focus is on the heart.