Fall Picnics & The Passover
Losing grandparents and a great-aunt over the last several years has been tough. We would gather for funerals and reminisce about our family traditions. We had the fall picnic, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and easter traditions. Today, I want to share a little about our fall picnics. I remember making hot dogs and s’mores over a fire, playing in a pretend fort we made from random things, and a falling-down dog kennel. I remember hay rides with my cousins and driving Grandma and Grandpa Golf cart too fast in circles in their driveway.
This tradition had distinct, separate memories from year to year, but the way we gathered always looked the same. We would all arrive at our grandparents’ house as we could make it on the fall weekend of October. Grandma and Grandpa cleaned out their garage and arranged it as they did yearly, with hay bales and chairs to sit on. A worktable turned buffet table, a table to the side to hold the hot cocoa and apple cider, and the wood-burning stove fully stocked and stoked to warm the garage. There was always a bonfire outside the garage. Cousins would run around, and aunts and uncles would hang out inside or outside.
You would hear laughter, and when the time came, there was a scavenger hunt that grandma had put together for all the families to participate in. On the surface, fall picnics were only really about coming together as a family. But as you experienced them, you realized they were about grandma’s love for her entire family, immediate and extended. It was about sharing life and giving a grounding moment of joy and happiness for my grandma and her family.
You may be wondering how this connects to this week’s passage. The Israelites are given lots of instructions about how to prepare a meal, be ready to leave, and continue practicing this meal in the future. If you read the story leading up to this, you might also struggle with the fact that God has hardened Pharo’s heart many times. You might think the things God has put Egypt through with plagues are wild, including a river of blood, gnats, flies, locusts, frogs, boils, and darkness. And then you might be a little mad at God for killing all the firstborn boys of Egypt. Mind you, it might help to remember that Pharo ordered all of Israel’s new born boys to be killed earlier in the story.
I share my memory of the fall picnic because it may not have been an event God told us every year, but it formed and shaped us. It created a longing for us to be together as a family and care about what was happening in each other’s lives. It taught us how to love each other, which helped us learn to love others.
The Passover meal carried with it so many important forming moments. Repeating the meal in the future would remind them of God’s care for them as a nation. It would also give them hope for a future when the sacrifice of Christ would save all humanity and not just Israel. It would remind them to trust God for their needs, not excess. It would form and remind them that they practiced it year after year. Just like my family, fall picnics formed me and my family.
So today, as you read the story of Isreal being passed over and their exodus from Egypt, I challenge you to reflect and consider how the Passover would have formed them and what practices in your life are forming you to trust God more.
How did the Passover event and the repeated Passover meal form Israel’s understanding of God?
What practices in your life are forming your understanding of God? Could and should they be improved? In what ways?