Day 36

Chag Sameach!  Joyous Festival!  Happy Passover!

My father was a wandering Aramean,
and he went down into Egypt,
and he lived there as a small people,
and he became a great, powerful and numerous nation.
And the Egyptians treated us badly 
and afflicted us
and subjected us to hard labor.
And we cried out to the Lord,
God of our ancestors,
and the Lord heard our voice
and saw our affliction
and our toil
and our oppression.
And the Lord brought us out of Egypt
with a strong hand
and with an outstretched arm
and with great terror
and with signs
and with wonders (Deut. 26:5-8)

A suggestion for your prayer and meditation:

Tradition dictates that this passage serve as the focus of midrash - an extended discussion about the meaning of the story and its relevance to our lives.  Recite the passage and consider how you understand the story of the Exodus and where you might find yourself in this story.

(taken from Gould Farm Passover Hagada)
Pastor Patty Fox 40 Days with 40 Christian Mystics

For me this is part of a story, part of a heritage, part of the ongoing relationship between a people and their God. The ongoing retelling of the narrative at each Passover celebration reminds of our own Anglican retelling of the Last Supper in each Eucharistic prayer. There's something about the importance of remembrance and repetition as a collective and communal act.

"This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance" (Exodus 12:14)

"Do this in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19)

Love Life Live Advent

Praise the Lord and alleluia! My prayers were answered- instead of being out on a limb, trying to use my own brain each day to think of things to blog throughout Advent, the marvellous folk behind Love Life Live Lent have launched Love Life Live Advent.
Today, Advent Sunday, has been exciting for lots of reasons. It's the first day of the church year so I get to open my shiny new diary- a whole new year of blank pages and possibilities lie ahead. Another new beginning was my children (and four of their friends) taking their first communion, starting the next part of their relationship with God.
LLLA asks us today to think about the church patriarchs- the first generations to whom God made his promise of an intimate relationship. If Advent is the time we Christians use to feel prepared for God coming to live among us it feels right that we start by thinking about Abraham and Sarah as that's where the wait began. God's promise to Abraham was fulfilled in Jesus' birth and the Old Testament, or Hebrew Scriptures, tell the story of a people waiting for that fulfilment.
Our wait through the next few weeks is thankfully shorter and we know when Jesus will come, but one my aims this Advent is to connect with the anticipation of the Hebrew people as they awaited the Messiah.