January 25 - Exodus 12-13:16

And now the climax.  The Passover.  The Lord presides over a mass killing.  This is very, very hard for me to comprehend and accept. Certainly He'd been long suffering and given Pharaoh plenty of opportunities to give in to His will.  So many dead and so much suffering by so many people who weren't in a position to have a decision in the matter.  Did any Egyptians hear from a Jewish slave they'd been kind toward about putting the blood of the lamb on the door frame?  Were their Egyptians who knew and obeyed?  We don't know.  

It's so hard to imagine.  Your firstborn child dead.  All of that death is the Lord's will.  I admit this is one of the hard places in the Bible for me.  Here it becomes more than just a story.  These are the lives of beloved children.  I admit I do not have the faith to understand or dismiss this as necessary.  I only have the faith to know there is so much I do not know and to trust in the Lord.  I acknowledge I am not without guilt since I crucify God's firstborn son daily with my sin.  He morns my murder of His son daily.  And so how do I even dare look at this and question?  But I do.  Remember doubting Thomas received his answer.  

Yes, earlier Pharaoh had the Hebrew children slaughtered to manage their growth and Moses had escaped this to see Pharaoh's sin revenged.   But even so.  Evil for evil?  What is it that Tevye says in Fiddler on the Roof when a villager exclaims, "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth"?  He says, "Very good.  That way the whole world will be blind and toothless."

I'm bothered, too, that so much time in this chapter is spent on the Passover ceremony.  It strikes me as insensitive.  All of those lives lost, the pain and the suffering.  I know I'm questioning God.  But how can a creature so small in comparison to God's wisdom and power approach Him without questions?