Exodus 12:16 On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat; that is all you may do.
“Do no work at all on these days” in verse 16 put me in mind of the early days of marriage and childrearing. The hubs and I both thought mowing on Sunday was out, as mowing is definitely work. Yet I was often grading papers on Sundays, as was he. When our oldest wanted to go fishing on a Sunday, the hubs’ first response was no, yet I see fishing as pure recreation, meaning it would be allowed.
Exodus 12:17-18 “Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day.
This reverie brings me back to the idea that blind rule-following isn’t ever what God had in mind for us. We were focused only on what was allowed, not why we were doing what we were doing. God wants us to take time, preferably daily, to be with Him, to draw closer to Him. I truly don’t think He cares whether we fish or mow as long as we are making time and space for Him and for His people, His creation.
Exodus 12:19 For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And anyone, whether foreigner or native-born, who eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel.
Precious Savior, I am so very good at following the rules. Help me not to lose Your point with those rules. Help me to spend time with You, daily, to spend time with Your people and in Your creation, to draw closer to You. Help me, Jesus. Amen.
Exodus 12:20 Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.”
Have a blessed day.