Monday, April 6, 2009

Christian Passover

As believers in Jesus Christ, we believe that we are grafted into the people of Israel through our faith in Christ as the promised Messiah. At Easter we celebrate His victory over death and the beautiful fact that he paid the price for sins on the cross, taking the punishment upon himself. Why would such a gruesome thing be beautiful? Because it was God's plan for the redemption of mankind from the very earliest times! Christ died willingly so that we could be set free from the punishment from sins. His love was so great, that he allowed Himself to be sacrificed, and that love is not just beautiful, it's magnificant!.

The Jewish people celebrate Passover to remember the defining moment when God told them to sacrifice a lamb and put the blood over their doors so that the plague of the angel of death who was coming to take the firstborn of the land would pass over their homes.

Christians celebrate Easter, the ultimate fulfillment of the Passover promise, when Christ, the Lamb of God, was sacrificed once for all to deliver believers into eternal life.

So... since our Savior is the ultimate fulfillment, we believe, of the Jewish Passover, we had a Christian Passover this past Saturday with many of our fellow believers. Here's a picture of the 30 or so of us!

We all sat at one long table in the new part of our house. There were all sorts of traditional ceremonies that we did which were to remind us of God's faithfulness to the Jewish people and to us in delivering them from slavery and us from slavery to sin. We had toasts, prayers and readings by various members of the group. Everyone got to participate. The food included a delicious Matzoh Ball Soup, salad, charoseth (an apple, nut, honey mixture--delicious!), salads, fruit, chicken, potatoes, carrots, kosher cookies for dessert and LOTS of grape juice! It was a meaningful and fun evening, and we are thankful for all who made it possible.

Katie and my dear friend, Michelle.

Timmy and his good buddy Nathan.


If you are interested in learning more, Family Celebrations at Easter by Ann Hibbard is an excellent source we used. It gives you recipes and all the information you need. I tried to give you a link, but it didn't appear to work. Amazon has it.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Broken

In the space of a few short hours our family experienced:
a broken thumb, (Timmy's--he's casted and fine now)
a broken cell phone, (it's duct tapable)
a broken rule (or two) (or three or four...for privacy we'll say no more (that rhymes))
two broken dishes (shattered to pieces on our lovely granite counter)
broken plans (due to ER visit for aforementioned thumb)
broken hearts (not us, but in the ER a poor elderly man was trying to find his wife who'd been ambulanced to another location and a young woman was in a corner sobbing her heart out.)

My point is, all life breaks. It all heads to chaos quicker than we can keep up. My house would be the perfect example right now. It makes me so grateful that Christ is the anchor for our souls. It's all supposed to break. It's ok. It makes us cling to Him.