Eaten in haste

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.

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.