In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD’s Passover. (Exodus 12:11)
So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls being bound up in their cloaks on their shoulders. (Exodus 12:34)
One of the intriguing dynamics of the exodus narrative is the urgency of the moment of the exodus, the moment of salvation. For Moses and the Israelites, under the thumb of Pharaoh in Egypt, the moment finally arrives after much preparation (the call and commission of Moses), trial and suffering (the plagues), and much dialogue (between Pharaoh and Moses). The series of episodes leads to the critical moment for the people of Israel to make their move; when the critical moment arrived, it happened quickly, it happened in haste.
So, what’s the importance of this detail in the story of the exodus? More than this, as the exodus is a type of the salvation to come in the new covenant, how does this dynamic apply in the context of the new covenant?
I think the importance of the detail is the prioritization of the eternal over and above the temporal. It reminds us that we’re sojourners, travelers in this broken land, until salvation is complete. This isn’t all there is. There is a living hope for something better than life in Egypt. We have a call to never be at home in the brokenness of the fallen world. Our lives must demonstrate a constant preparedness for an urgent mobility to inherit that living hope.
We are not to abide in this life. We abide in Him.
“For we are strangers before you and sojourners, as all our fathers were. Our days on the earth are like a shadow, and there is no abiding” (1 Chronicles 29:15)
Let’s be mindful of where we abide.
