Pecking Order

When our children were little tykes, they loved the story
of The Little Red Hen. TLRH tediously produced bread from first step to last that she alone would finally eat at the end of the day. Persistence can solve or cause complication.

For Christmas last year, I gave my husband an afternoon with a landscape designer to draft his field of dreams. For years, we have been stymied about what to plant where, and now The Plan has rested all argument.

Excited to get started, we declared that every holiday was a good excuse for The Plan to be implemented. Valentine's Day was coming up. We asked around for bids to transplant several hundred feet of liriope into an expanded shape around our trees.
The rates were outrageous!

While grousing about the high cost of labor one February afternoon, I dug and he scooped, and a few hours later, these two tough birds were cock-sure we could wing it. We carefully measured and spray painted the curvy line (minus $15) and rented a tiller (minus $75) to drill through the clay and rocks. So began the bits and pieces of mornings and scraps of afternoons spent scratching in the dirt, chirping like cheap chickens, halfway hoping to attract a flock of help.

A few weeks of birding in paradise and one day, the sharp pain of sciatica got my attention. It feels like a muscle cramp that won't cry uncle. Grounded on the sofa, I cancelled a weekend retreat reservation. (minus $150)
Then pollen dowsed us, and we dosed with antihistamines and dallied out only to water the sprouts. Right after Easter, I began digging again. After 30 minutes, the nerve pain struck like lightning, and required a trip to the clinic across town (minus $110 + gas) and repeated visits (minus $45 each+ gas).

I'm not sure how much The Little Red Hen saved by making her own delicious loaf of bread,
but I suspect she never baked another thing and dined contentedly on worms instead.

Blood Brothers

We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. (2 Corinthians 5:20-21).

Courtesy of the small business I manage, I'm introduced to a variety of Jews: entrepreneurs, school teachers, rabbis, an Iranian mother who grew up near Queen Esther's tomb. As a result, my prejudices have been challenged as I learn more about what individuals believe and how they practice their faith. What began as a surface intrigue has grown into a surprising desire to find common ground to turn conversations toward topics of transformation.

As Easter approached this year, I was thinking more about Passover and how the elements God commanded the Israelites to use in preparation of their exit from Egypt relate to The Lord's Supper. I convinced my amiable husband to accompany me to a Messianic Passover Seder, hosted by Jewish Christians.

We arrived at the Sabbath event and were seated at dinner tables along with 300 believers and seekers. Promptly, we were adopted by a group of African American Baptists (one asked if I was Jewish) and then the remaining seats at our table were filled by missionaries to Afghanistan and their friends. As the Seder began, we voted the oldest woman, the Baptist grandmother, as our mother. She, along with the designated mothers at every table, lit the candles as the host rabbi's (non-Jewish) wife said the blessing over the entire group. The "fathers" at each table broke the middle of three layers of unleavened bread, replacing half in the pouch and obscuring the other half in a napkin. What unenlightened Jewish rabbis explain as a child's game to break up the monotony of a long Passover meal is in fact the hiding of the broken bread (Jesus was the only visible member of the Trinity) covered in linen (symbolic of Jesus' wrapped and buried body) only to be discovered later--as Jesus too appeared after his resurrection.

There were four ancient questions to be answered as we passed parley dipped in salt water, matzo bread, horseradish, honeyed apples, and hardboiled eggs. We raised our cups four times: to commemorate sanctification and plagues; and then later, after eating a meal of chicken, roasted potatoes, vegetables and fruit, we celebrated redemption and praise. At one point, I hid among the conversation, like a middle child, spooning up food while silently observing faces, listening to the sounds of elders. Hymns were sung, some in English and some in Hebrew--the official language of heaven, as the rabbi's wife suggested with a smile.

As the children searched for the "afikomen", that concealed parcel of matzo bread, a third cup was poured. Then the "father" crushed the retrieved cracker in its napkin and served a sliver to each "family" member while we raised the cup of redemption--to signify freedom from slavery. The rabbi explained that this was the time in the Passover meal when Jesus revealed to his disciples the true meaning of the bread and wine, the fulfillment of Messiah as the Passover Lamb. The obedience of the Jews to dab the blood of a spotless lamb on their doorposts to be passed over by the death angel pointed to Jesus' sacrifice as the perfect son of God (the broken bread) as the blood ransom (the cup of wine) on the threshold of faithful human hearts.

In a strange place, sharing unfamiliar customs with new acquaintances, the past shadow of a future feast was an undeniable unity that stirred many to misty eyes and silent prayer. As we raised the final halle cup of praise, the rabbi shared his testimony. When he was a teenager searching for truth, he was warned by his beloved parents not to touch the subject of Jesus or he would be disowned. Later, as a college student in possession of his first Bible, smuggled from a hotel room, the forbidden truth of Matthew's gospel seared his conscience. He gave his life over to the King of Jews, suffered the rejection and disbelief of his parents, and was called to minister to those whom he describes as the biggest omission to the Great Commission--the Jewish community. He acknowledged that, as Paul said, through the envy of Gentiles would his people be stirred to jealousy for the Gospel.

So my dilemma seems to be in serving Jewish customers, while I may strive to delight them with our educational product, I must also be planting a seed of theological dissatisfaction.
What I can't possibly do, Jesus can.

Passed Over

Then you shall take some of the blood, and put it on the door posts and the lintels of the houses . . .

and when I see the blood, I shall pass over you, and no plague shall fall upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
-Exodus 12: 7 & 13

They thought they were safe
that spring night; when they daubed
the doorways with sacrificial blood.
To be sure, the angel of death
passed them over, but for what?
Forty years in the desert
without a home, without a bed,
following new laws to an unknown land.
Easier to have died in Egypt
or stayed there a slave, pretending
there was safety in the old familiar.

But the promise, from those first
naked days outside the garden,
is that there is no safety,
only the terrible blessing
of the journey. You were born
through a doorway marked in blood.
We are, all of us, passed over,
brushed in the night by terrible wings.

Ask that fierce presence,
whose imagination you hold.
God did not promise that we shall live,
but that we might, at last, glimpse the stars,
brilliant in the desert sky.

~ Lynn Ungar ~

(Blessing the Bread)