The First Passover
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In Exodus 12, we learn of Moses. He was an Israelite baby who was spared the judgment of the Pharaoh who had issued a decree to kill male Israelite babies. He was basically trying to reduce the Israelite population. Cruel? You bet. Hard to fathom? Oh yeah. I wish I could say that this cruelty had been eliminated in the world today. But I’d be lying.
Moses was spared. He eventually commits murderer in a fit of rage and if you read carefully the accounts of Moses, I think you might agree with me that he was a bit of a whiner too. He was good and bad during the entirety of his life, ultimately not making it into the Promised Land himself. He was called to set his people free and successful in doing so to a point. Before, during and after he was weak and strong, trusting and distrusting. The freedom journey was long and arduous and eventually it worked but a lot of people got slaughtered along the way. God had a plan which the Israelites executed and were saved by that allowed their freedom journey to BEGIN. But it was all long and hard, glorious and gut-wrenching.
We could make a big old long list of the events within the past 12 months that reflect a tone deafness and lack of awareness of how we have continued to marginalize, dehumanize and allow or willingly pursue the winnowing out of one race, religion, gender or another.
But that’s not the point of this devotional. Here’s my point: God is always up to something. Prepare yourself not by perfecting a sparkly crown of good behavior but by figuring out a way to remember that there is a God and he is crazy about you. Just try. Someday we all may look back on our lives and see how we were part of the starry sky, a constellation of God’s people who in small but significant ways provided a pin prick of light in an otherwise dark landscape.
