Eaten in haste
The first Passover
Picture the meal. It is the strangest supper in Scripture, because no one sits down. The lamb is roasted, the bread is flat because there was no time to let it rise, and the LORD's instruction is precise about how to eat it: belt fastened, sandals already on the feet, walking-staff in hand, the whole thing swallowed standing and fast. This is not a feast to linger over. It is rations bolted by people who expect, at any moment, to hear the door thrown open and a voice say go.
And that is exactly what happens. At midnight the blow falls on Egypt, and before dawn Pharaoh is summoning Moses in the dark, telling Israel to rise up and get out and serve their God. The window opens suddenly and it does not stay open long. Four hundred years of slavery end in a single night, and the people who walk free are the ones who ate dressed for the road. The ones who had settled in for a long night, who had unlaced their sandals and banked the fire, would have missed it. Deliverance came at the speed of a door swinging open.
“With your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand, you shall eat it in haste; it is the LORD's Passover.”
— The LORD, instituting the Passover — Exodus 12:11 (WEB)
“Rise up, get out from among my people... and go, serve the LORD, as you have said.”
Disconnect asks for readiness. Before the wilderness, before the new land, there is a door that will open suddenly, and the phase requires you to stand dressed for the road. The break rewards the poised and passes by the settled. Faithfulness here looks like sandals on, waiting, when the night is still ordinary.
Some deliverances have a narrow window, and they do not announce themselves in advance. You cannot schedule the night the door opens; you can only be dressed for it or not. The hard truth underneath the Passover is that readiness is a posture you hold before you have any proof you will need it — sandals on through a long, ordinary evening, on the strength of a promise that tonight might be the night. Most of us would rather get comfortable. We unpack in the very Egypt God is calling us out of; we tell ourselves the move is coming and meanwhile we settle deeper into what we mean to leave. But the break, when it comes, tends to come fast, and comfort is slow to its feet. The question Disconnect puts to you is not whether you believe deliverance is coming. It is whether you would be standing, staff in hand, if it came tonight — or still asleep with your shoes off.
The Church too is summoned to travel light, dressed for a road it cannot yet see. History keeps a sobering record of the seasons when God flung a door open and only the ready walked through it, while the settled slept on. The renewals that swept whole movements forward found a remnant already on its feet, loosely holding its buildings and budgets and inherited habits. Readiness to leave the old behind is not faithlessness in the Body; it is faithfulness. In this present shaking the same posture is asked of the Church universal: not so wedded to what was that it cannot move the night God acts. A people too settled to travel will sleep straight through its own deliverance.
Beneath the haste and the narrow window stands the LORD who opens the door at all. The night belongs to Him; the timing is His. What cannot be shaken is not your alertness but His deliverance — sure to come, sudden when it comes, and worth standing dressed for through every long and ordinary evening.
- Am I dressed for the road, or have I unpacked and settled into the very Egypt God is calling me out of?
- What comfort am I sinking into that would slow me down if the door opened tonight?
- Do I believe my deliverance is coming enough to stand ready before I can see it?
Lord, I have grown comfortable in the place You mean to lead me out of, my shoes off, the fire banked. Find me standing instead, dressed for the road, staff in hand. When You open the door, let me be on my feet and ready to go at the speed of Your deliverance. Amen.