December 10

The Blood on the Door

A doorframe is plain carpentry. It holds the door up, and a household passes under it all day without giving it a thought. On the night the Lord passed through Egypt, the doorframe of every Israelite house became the most important surface in the country.

Moses called the elders of Israel together and gave every house the same job. Take a lamb for the family, kill it, dip a bunch of hyssop in the basin of blood, and strike the top of the doorway and both of its posts. Then go inside, and stay inside until morning.

Then Moses called for all the elders of Israel, and said to them, "Draw out, and take lambs according to your families, and kill the Passover. You shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin; and none of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel, and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door, and will not allow the destroyer to come in to your houses to strike you."

Exodus 12:21-23

God says that he will see the blood and pass over the door. The whole weight of that night rests there, on a sign the families were given and a promise God made about it. A lamb had died, its blood was on the doorframe where God could see it, and every person in the house was safe under a mark God himself had told them to make.

Christians have called Christ our Passover since the first generation, and the Gospels place his death in Jerusalem during that same feast. The reading is a plain one. A death has happened, the mark is on the door, and God keeps his word when he sees it. The child Christmas celebrates was born to be that shelter himself, and the news of him is good today, well before Christmas morning.

Carry that into a crowded month. December will not slow down to let you get ready for it. What keeps you was finished by someone else, and it holds steady through ordinary days of work and errands and dishes left until morning, through weeks when prayer feels thin, through whatever is unresolved in your house this year.

The last instruction to the elders that night was to go into the house and not come out until the morning. Under a mark made at God's word, inside walls they could not defend, they had one thing left to do, and it was to stay put and let God keep his word until it was light. Inside there was the waiting. Outside, God did what he had said.

Thank you for the blood of your Son, Lord. You gave the sign, and you promised to see it. Keep me inside your word tonight, and bring me through to the morning.