As the end of the day approaches, the Jewish celebration of Passover begins.  This is an important day for Jewish people around the world as they stop what they are doing to remember how God intervened thousands of years ago to free their ancestors from slavery in Egypt. I find it helpful to remember Passover every year, even though I come from a Christian tradition. Pausing to remember the story reminds me that God was with them long ago, and God is still with us today.

If you don’t know the story of the Passover, you can read it in the Biblical book of Exodus which begins with an ominous observation that a new king came to power in Egypt who did not remember how important the descendants of Joseph (the ancient Jewish people) were. Rather than celebrating the people who had helped Egypt survive and thrive, the king viewed them as a threat. His solution was to enslave them through conscripted labor and limit them by ordering the midwives not to let the Jewish male infants survive.

This harsh treatment went on for a long time. Some Jewish interpretations say it was 400 years, others say it was less than 200.  Whichever it was, it was a long time for the people of God to suffer and cry out for help with little evidence that God was listening. Passover celebrates that in fact God was listening and still working toward fulfilling age-old promises.

When the time was right, Moses was born to Jewish parents, allowed to live by courageous midwives, and then adopted by Pharoah’s daughter.  When the time was right God appeared to Moses in a burning bush and convinced him to lead the Jewish people to freedom. This is an epic, and in many ways terrifying story as God’s divine power comes into full view through the ten plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. The ancient Jewish people are freed, but the cost to the ancient Egyptians is enormous. Generations of faithful people have pondered the meaning from countless angles.

Tonight, as the sun sinks below the horizon and we are left feeling vulnerable in the darkness, I am comforted to remember that we are not alone.  God is with us, even when we cannot see the signs. God is with us when we struggle, when people do evil things, and when we do not hear answers to our prayers. God may seem silent, or even inattentive, but one of the lessons of this night is that even in the most difficult hour God is still here.

So, let’s keep praying in the dark.  Let’s keep watching for the miracle that simply can’t happen.  Let’s keep listening for God’s invitation to take a journey across the desert to find freedom from whatever enslaves us today. Let’s keep the faith and hold on to hope. The story remembered at Passover does not make false promises that the journey will be easy or that life will be perfect. Rather it tells us that we are indeed, never alone and never without hope.