I, am a creature of habit. I loooooove predictability!
By nature, I like to work step by step and plan in advance. Details, structure and order are my jam. So, when something scatters my carefully laid plans, it distresses me.
I am one of those firm believers that life should’ve come with an instruction manual.
That’s not how life works.
Life is messy, unpredictable, subjective, sometimes stressful and hurtful. Life ends and that can be hard to deal with.
Life is also beautiful! New everyday, exciting, adventurous, progressive, a gift for however long we have it.
Most people believe that life ends with death. ‘Better live it up now, while we still got it!’
Christians believe eternal life has been given to us through the gift of Jesus’ death on the cross.
This past Sunday, my pastor was talking about the Last Supper Jesus had with His disciples before He was crucified (Mark 14). Pastor referred back to the Passover and Festival of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 12) which is still held annually to remember and celebrate the Israelites escape from slavery in ancient Egypt.
Passover means to ‘pass without touching’. God had sent plague after plague on the Egyptians to get Pharaoh to release the Israelites. After each one Moses would ask Pharaoh to release God’s people and each time Pharaoh’s heart hardened and he refused.
The tenth and final plague is where the Passover comes in. The Israelite families were told to slaughter a lamb and put the blood across their doorposts and to stay in their homes until morning.
God passed over each home that had blood over the door. Those who didn’t follow this command lost their firstborn child, including Pharaoh. This is what it took for Pharaoh to finally release the Israelites out of captivity.
The Passover foreshadows the Last Supper events in that, just as a lambs blood had to be shed and painted over a doorpost to represent and protect God’s people from the last plague, Jesus had to die and His blood had to be shed to cover us and mark our lives as belonging to Him and being free from eternal death.
Our lives are a gift that came at a great cost.
Jesus didn’t die for us so we could mope around or have a perfectly laid plan or to fret about ‘the end’.
Sometimes, He’s the one shaking up our plans, testing us to see how we’ll react and hold up when He says ‘Go left’ and your thinking ‘But the left path is narrow and rocky! Can we go right where the path is clear and smooth?’.
Habits can become restrictive. Predictability becomes boring. Structure can become rigid.
We still need these things in our life to a certain extent. After all, we can’t run completely wild…… But we are free. We are saved. We have a purpose and a plan.
