Celebrating Passover

Since Passover is quickly coming up, I will give you a general overview of what we, as a family, do for Passover. 

 The best advice in celebrating any of God’s appointed feasts is to look in His Word to see what He tells us about His appointed days – these are His days, not the Jews’ days (Lev 23:2).  It is important to differentiate between God’s commands and man’s traditions.  Some manmade traditions don’t line up with scripture and should be avoided.  There are other traditions that aren’t required, although they can help in understanding the meaning of the holy days or making the celebration more enjoyable.  Our family has many traditions that we have gathered  through the years.

I am not going to get into a discussion of the various calendars and calculations that people use for the timing of Passover.  There are many ideas out there, but I feel it is important not to get hung up on timing so much that it impairs the celebration.  First and most important is celebrating the day and, as God leads, looking into the various calendar calculations after that.  So, if you’re being led to celebrate these days, find the date on the calendar or Google it and just do it.

I love Passover.  It is my favorite holy day.  To really take the time to stop and dwell on the sacrifice of Yeshua and what He has done for me.  To have an object lesson of removing sin (leavening) from my life and replacing it with Yeshua (unleavened bread) each and every day.  To grieve for what I have caused Him and then to rejoice for what He has given me.  What an emotional roller coaster Passover is.  It's awesome the things that I learn while enjoying the gifts that God has given me through His holy days.

Passover preparation in our house usually begins right about now.  Passover is about a month away and I am starting to plan the meal, think of what I need to do to help the children understand, preparing for the service, meditiating on Yeshua's sacrifice and what He has done for me, etc

A couple of weeks before Passover, I go through the cupboards and remove all leavening and leavened products from our food supplies. I put these products in a crate and everyone knows that we want to use these up before Passover, so we waste as little food as possible.  The kids love it because many of these products are “goodies” and they get to eat them more often. 

I was raised thinking that I needed to do spring cleaning in order to properly prepare for unleavened bread.  I would clean for weeks making sure to get every nook and cranny in my house clean.  And, believe it or not, I would always still miss something.  But I found that I would spend so much time focusing on the physical cleaning of my home that I neglected the spiritual cleaning of my temple.

We don’t find any command in the Bible to spend weeks removing leavening from our homes.  It doesn't say to remove the leavening months before, weeks before, or even days before.  It says to do it right at the beginning of the festival. (Ex 12:15)  What a revelation that was to me!  I was following tradition all this time, not doing what the Bible says.  The Bible says to remove the leaven on the first day, so on the day of Passover, we throw the leavening in the trash and give the house a good thorough vacuuming.

One thing the little kids really look forward to as we lead up to the Passover is the "10 plague adventure".  On the 10 days leading up to the Feast, I "do" one of the plagues.  For instance, the morning of the first plague, the kids wake up and find all the water in the house is red.  I put red food coloring in toilets, water bottles, etc.  I got this idea from the book "Family Guide to the Biblical Holidays" by Robin Scarlata.  I also recommend "Celebrate the Feasts" by Martha Zimmerman.  We have found many traditions that we enjoy in these books.

We don’t do a traditional Jewish Seder.  Since the Seder is not commanded and it is very long, we structure our day differently.  We have a worship service in the afternoon.  This way we are commemorating Yeshua’s sacrifice at the time He was sacrificed. We enjoy praise and worship very much, so we incorporate a lot of music into our service.  We start with more solemn songs and they get progressively more joyful throughout the afternoon/evening.  This way, musically, we moved from the solemnity of our Savior’s sacrifice to the joy of our salvation.  The songs are interspersed throughout - 2 or 3 at a time between scripture reading, discussion, foot washing and taking of the bread and wine.  By the end of the evening we are dancing and making a joyful noise. 

We begin by reading Exodus 12 - the story of the first Passover.  After that we sacrifice a lamb (stuffed animal) and brush the blood (strawberry juice which dh squirts under the lamb when the littlest child "kills" it with a butter knife) on the doorpost with a small branch.  This gives the children a little more understanding of what the Israelites went through on that first Passover.  Then we discuss who in the room is a firstborn (we usually have a couple of families celebrating with us) and would be covered by the blood on the doorpost - but Christ's sacrifice covers us all.

The next part of the evening is spent reading about the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ - trying to help the children realize the extent of what He did for us; that He was the final sacrifice - our Passover lamb.

We then move on to the bread, wine and footwashing.  We read the scriptures referring to Christ's last supper with His disciples.  (Matt 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, John 13).  As we read through this, we take the symbols of bread and wine.

Matt 26:26  "And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body."  We each break a piece of unleavened bread and eat it as a symbol of Christ's body and the sacrifice He made for us.  Some people use matzos.  Some make homemade unleavened crackers.  We bake a regular loaf of bread and leave the yeast out.  It tastes a lot better than matzos.  Besides, we figure that's how the bread was in Exodus.  The Bible doesn't say they made crackers, it just said their bread didn't have leavening in it. (Ex 12:39)

Matt 26:27-28  "And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."  We pour one cup of wine and all drink from the same glass - remembering the blood that Christ shed for us. 

After that we wash each other’s feet, following Christ's example in John 13:3-17.  This is an example of serving one another.  We use a plastic dishpan and wash and dry each other's feet.  The kids really look forward to this part of the service.

After the service, we finalize our food and then we have our Passover dinner.  We plan a very special dinner for the evening - the fanciest meal of the year.  We always pull out our fine china and special flatware, and have wonderful delicious food that we usually don't have any other time of year.

After dinner we enjoy the most celebratory songs of the evening.  We pull out the musical instruments, dance, sing and praise our great God and our Savior.  Then after we've danced away the dinner calories, we have a decadent dessert.  We usually have several desserts, but chocolate covered strawberries are always a requirement ;)

Every day of the feast we eat unleavened bread.  If you want to buy unleavened bread, try matzos, corn tortillas, Ry Krisp or Triscuits.  I usually have some crackers in the house, but I like to make unleavened goodies with the kids.  It gives us a chance to review that leavening pictures the sin in our life.  We must put the sin out and replace it with the righteousness of Yeshua  (unleavened bread).  If we simply put sin out without replacing it with something, there is a void in our life.  We need to be filled with the rightousness of our Savior.

Lev 23:9-14 also talks about the wave sheaf offering.  Again, I’m not going to debate timing of this day.  But it is in the Bible and we do our best to celebrate it with the minimal information we have.  This was the day during the Feast that they made a special offering of the first of the firstfruits.  Yeshua is the first of the firstfruits (I Cor 15:20).  This is the day that we remember he was raised and is alive.  The priest waved the sheaf of the firstfruits before God just as Jesus was raised before the Lord after His crucifixion.

I love the object lessons of Passover/Unleavened Bread.  Leavening pictures sin during this time of year.  It is so difficult to remove all the leavening from our home and not eat leavening.  I always find leavening hidden someplace just as there are always hidden sins in our life.  And we have noticed over the years that since I stay home where (most) of the leavening has been removed, I have a much easier time not eating it accidentally.  However, dh is out in the world where leavening is everywhere and he often slips up and partakes of the leavening (sin) without even thinking about it ... til later.

 I'd love to hear how others celebrate God's appointed times. 

Watch the Door

OK, so I was walking through the great room and I saw that the front door was open.  It has been hard to close securely lately, so I head down the entry hall to see if any little are outside.  Just as I’m walking out the front door, I hear a horn honking and I see Arianah running up the driveway crying and a car that had slowed down, resumes normal speed and drives down the street.  I don't know exactly what happened, except that the car slowed down and honked at Arianah, who, for all I know was in the middle of the street!

Elijah was standing by the Yukon in the driveway. I asked him why they were out there and he tells me she wanted to go outside so he took her.  Aaaaarggghhh!  So I drag him and Arianah inside and give him a short, but frustrated lecture.  Then I spent some time thanking Abba for, once again, protecting one of my little ones.

 A little later I sat down with him and repeated how dangerous it was for him to take Arianah outside and he can’t do that anymore or he’ll be in trouble, etc.  I said, “Arianah could have been hurt really bad and gone to the hospital or she could have died.”  And he says to me, very seriously, “If Ariaranah dies, we can have a little brother.” So, now I have to keep a straight face and solemnly tell him that we would still miss Arianah very much even if we had a little brother for him.  

You just never know what ‘s going to come out of that kids mouth.  And he sure is mentioning a little brother a lot.

And now it's time for higher security measures on the front door.

Dishwasher

The other night Lucas happily licked his plate clean after dinner.  What can I say, guacamole makes people do crazy things :)  Then he proudly held up his plate and told us it was clean enough to go back in the cupboard.  I don't think I want to eat off that plate!

Paul and Silas

We have a new school project this week - two new babies in the house.  Their names are Paul and Silas. They are baby parrotlets that we are hand feeding.  I've never hand raised birds before.  I've had birds off and on over the years.  Most of them weren't hand raised and were a pain to finger train. But I find that hand raising them is much more fun even than having them hand raised by someone else.  

It's nice because they are old enough that we don't have to feed them during the night.  Just every few hours during the day.  At first we didn't know what we were doing and it seemed like the birds didn't either.  

But it is so cute now to open their box and have them open their mouths and start cheeping at me.  And you should see them down a dropper full of formula!  They are fast!  Sometimes they will eat 10% of their body weight in one sitting.

It's awesome to see how incredibly and meticulously God created every living thing.  We have watched them get their feathers and learn to sit on a finger.  We've seen them fill their crops with food and yell for more when their crop is empty.  The little guys love holding them.  We are having lots of fun with this project.

Paul is a messy eater.  He tends to get food on his face while he is eating.

This is Silas after a meal

Paul thinks he can fly, but he hasn't gotten off the ground yet :)

Dining Out With the Family

We went out to dinner tonight.  We haven't been dining out very much lately, since we have been tightening our belts like most of the nation.  That means the kids are out of practice, and you never can be entirely sure how the little ones will act.  

We went to a restaurant we have gone to several times over the years.  Since we were a party of 10 (my mom was with us), they showed us to the largest table in the restaurant where they often seat us.  It is located in a smaller room which is often empty except for us.  

Tonight, however, there was a couple eating their dinner when we got there.  We were enjoying our dinner out and when the couple behind us finally got up to leave, they stopped at our table and raved about what a wonderful family we are.  They enjoyed that we prayed for our meal together (Justin joked that they noticed the prayer because that was the only moment we were relatively quiet.) and commented repeatedly about how well behaved the kids were and how they enjoyed our interaction.  

The man said that when we walked in, he told his wife "Hurry up and eat!", thinking about how miserable it was going to be sharing the room with this family and all it's children.  But apparently they found that we weren't as bad as we first appeared. :) They kept saying how great the kids were and that it takes great parents to make great kids.

It's always nice to hear good things when you're swimming upstream.  After all, having seven kids isn't typical nowadays.  It's nice to hear that our hard work is paying off and that we are glorifying God as we go about our daily lives.  I need to remember to praise other families I see (large or small) when their kids are well behaved in public situations.  I know I like it when others do that for me.

Priorities

Ever have one of those days where you feel like you haven't gotten anything done - one of those days where a little one is very needy?  Today is one of those days.  I have to keep in mind that I am doing my job.  My job today is holding a baby with 102 degree fever who really wants her Mommy.  That's first on my to-do list - top priority.  And second on my list is coaching the other kids from the sidelines.  That's one of the blessings of being home with my kids.  She just alternates between nursing and sleeping and I do my job for today. Pretty much everything else will be wiped off my list - or at least postponed until another day.  It's kind of like a traditional job when some sudden and urgent task arises and everything else gets pushed to the sidelines.

I remember the days when I would feel guilty about sitting here all day.  I would feel guilty that my to-do list wasn't being accomplished.  And, honestly, even now, there is an niggling thought in the back of my mind that I could be doing something else if I could just lay her down or pass her off.  But today I know I'm doing what is most important.  Everything else can wait.

And, thankfully, I have bigger kids that will help me keep everything (just barely) under control. They are happy to help when I ask.  And, when Rebekah is bored, she makes cookies.  What could be better than that?

The Joys of Homeschooling

Homeschooling is such a blessing.  I love it (usually)!  One of the great things about homeschooling is that it doesn't have to look anything like traditional schooling.  And, some days look more untraditional than others.  

Lucas pierced his ear.  OK, he didn't really.  It's held on with scotch tape.  But, what can we label this class as?  Career preparation?  No, hopefully he won't really be into body piercing :)

Rebekah was working on science and her favorite munchkin wanted to be held.  So, she strapped her on with a Maya Wrap and continued her work.  Arianah stayed there happily for a long time.  So, I guess she gets credit for science and mother in training.

Elijah spent part of the morning running around practicing with the nerf gun.  I'm thinking that counts as PE.

Lucas is climbing the doorway.  That has to count as PE, too.

Hannah was helping me put the dewey decimal labels on the school books.  That's gotta count for something.  And, yes, she is doing school in her PJs.  That's another benefit of homeschooling.  At least that's what I hear from the children.

Now Elijah is doing science.  The rain brought the worms onto the patio.  Rebekah mentioned that if you cut a worm in half, you'll get two live worms.  So ... he did!  Typical boy.

Stay tuned.  I'm sure we'll have another untraditional day of school sooner or later.