When I See the Blood

It is evening in a Hebrew house in Egypt. There is a basin on the floor, and a bunch of hyssop is being used as a brush. The instructions are homely and exact. There is to be "a lamb for an house," killed "in the evening." Its blood is struck "on the two side posts and on the upper door post," and then the door is shut for the night: "none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning." The family eats in haste, with shoes on their feet and staffs in their hands.

Notice where the sign was put, because everything else depends on it. The blood 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 sign was theirs to put up, and the seeing was God's. Nobody in that house went out with a lamp to check the paint, and nobody was one bit safer for feeling sure about it. They were safe because of the blood and the One who saw it.

The distance between that night and this morning is real, and it is worth keeping in mind. They had a date, a real doorframe, and a service to pass on. The answer was even written down ahead of time for the day "your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service?" Paul reaches back to the same feast in one short line: "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us." Hebrews sums up Moses' whole night this way: "Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood." What comes down to you is a direction to look in.

So when an accusing voice starts up at two in the morning, remember that the evidence is outside the house, and it always was. Do what that family was told to do with its children, and say it out loud for yourself. Name whose blood it is, and whose eyes are on it. Then go back to sleep, trusting God's eyesight more than your own feelings.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 228 is God For Us (Romans 8:31).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two