Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 228 · August 16
When I See the Blood
“And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.”
Evening in a slave quarter, a basin on the floor, and a bunch of hyssop being used as a brush. The instructions are domestic and exact: a lamb for a house, killed in the evening, the blood struck on the two side posts and on the upper door post, and the door shut for the night. None of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning. They ate standing up with their shoes on.
Notice where the sign was put, because it decides everything else. It went on the outside of the door, and the family spent the night on the inside, in the dark, with no view of it. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. The token is theirs and the seeing is his. Nobody in that house went out with a lamp to check the paint, and nobody was one degree safer for feeling confident about it.
Keep the distance between that night and this morning, because it is real. They had a date, a literal doorframe, and a service to hand on: when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service, the answer was written down for them in advance. Paul reaches for the same feast in a single clause, Christ our passover is sacrificed for us, and Hebrews files the whole night under one heading, through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood. What comes down to you is a direction to look in. When the accusation starts at two in the morning, the evidence is outside the house and always was. So do what that family was told to do with its children, out loud, for yourself. Name whose blood and whose seeing. Then go back to sleep on the strength of somebody else's eyesight.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 228 is God For Us (Romans 8:31).