SEASONS - SPRING BEGINS WITH A FAMILY PASSOVER - PART TWO

Just before we began our Passover meal ,

We will show a video of a fabulous group of dancers called The Silhouettes.  They tell the story without a word, just dances that appear like shadows on the wall!   

Words could not describe the story better. 

Here is a photo of us watching a few years ago; under the photo I will post the video for  anyone who wishes to view.  You can find it on You-tube.

Everyone was spell bound by the awesome presentation of the silent story,told only through shadows that changed and formed new shadows. 

  

Isn't this an awesome way to tell the story?  Enjoy!
In many ways Passover was and is a SHADOW of  the things to come.

We always know every Passover that we will hear the same story we have heard  last year and a million times before; but in a million different little ways we have come to  realize that we will learn something new each time.  You think you know it all, then you hear the story again and God shows you something else that is totally amazing.  

It is a wonderful mystery!

We begin our meal after sunset with the lighting of the Passover Candles.  

I, as the eldest woman of our household, have the priviledge of saying the candle lighting prayer. 

"Blessed art Thou, Lord Our God, Master of the Universe, who sanctifies us with Your commandments and commands us to kindle the light of Passover."

My husband, as priest of our home, blesses the first cup - The Cup of Sanctificaton.  The cup that signifies God saying to His people, "I will take you out of Egypt."  

Sanctification here means, to set apart.

At this point there is a song we love to sing together, it is called  The Passover Song, and the You-Tube version of it is included below for your enjoyment too.  

(Written and performed by Shira)

Don't you love the words to the lyrics?  Here they are all spelled out for you to ponder:

He said this is my body as He held up the bread,

Each time you eat of it remember

That I was broken for you

Just like the bread

My body, broken……just for you.

This is my blood, He took the cup and said,

Each time you drink of it – remember –

That it is a token of the blood I shed,

Oh -

LYRICS TO THE PASSOVER SONG

  Take the cup I pour for you.

A new covenant I give to you,

Poured out my love so you could live new life,

Always remember that I died for you

When you eat of the bread and drink the wine.

He said this is my body as He held up the bread.

Each time you eat of it remember –

That I was broken for you

Just like the bread,

My body,

Broken,

Just For you.

This is my blood, He took the cup and said

Each time you drink of it remember

That it is a token of the blood I shed,

O take the cup I pour for you.

A new covenant I give to you

Poured out my blood so you could live new life

Always remember that I died for you

When you eat of the bread and drink the wine.

For I am the Passover Lamb.

The One prophesied.

I came to be the sin offering,

The final sacrifice.

A new covenant I give to you,

Poured out my love,

so that you could live my life.

Always remember that I died for you

When you eat of the bread and drink the wine.

My husband, as the priest of our home, says the blessing over the first cup and we drink together.  

We move on to the blessing of the children of the household:

This is the traditional prayer that we recite over each child, grown or not...

O Lord hear our prayer of blessing over our sons:

May God make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.

O Lord hear our prayer of blessing over our daughters:

May God make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.

This year is special, in that we have a new granddaughter to join in this blessing!  It is my prayer that her Mom and Dad always say this prayer for her as she grows each day.  The prayer has been answered for us with the new life this daughter has brought into our family!  We will express our thanks to God for this during this time.

We perfom the ceremonial washing of the hands, 
then the dipping of the Karpas.  
We remember the last supper, when Jesus washed the disciples feet.  We remember that He has washed our sins away.  
When we eat the parsley dipped in the salt water we are reminded of the salty tears of slavery.  

My husband holds up the Matzot and breaks it.  

"This is the bread of afliction that our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt.  All who are hungry - let them come and eat.  All who are needy - let them come and celebrate the Passover with us."

The service has many more elements.  I will share them with you tomorrow.  
It is too rich for just one post!

SEASONS - SPRING BEGINS WITH A FAMILY PASSOVER SEDER (PART ONE)

 

 I want to share one of the most special parts of Spring for me - Our Family Passover Celebration.  Each Passover Seder helps us to better understand the full meaning of The Passion of Our Lord. 

 Every year the Church celebrates The Resurrection of Christ on Easter Morning (I prefer to use the words Resurrection Day instead of Easter), but you can't have a Resurrection until you've had a Passosver.   At our house, we drink in the whole season and this makes The Resurrection deeper and richer for us when we arrive in that place and time 

We join together for the Passover before we begin celebrating The Resurrection.  We celebrate Resurrection Day with our Church congregation, but we also observe The 7 Days of Unleavened Bread, and celebrate the second day of Unleavened Bread as Early Firstfruits that symbolizes the early grain harvest pointing to The Resurrection of Christ.  That was the day that the priest of ancient Israel waved the loaf of barley before the Lord as an offering.  This whole ritual process has so many elements of Resurrection, and I believe it was the actual day and pattern of the Resurrection of Christ.  I've written about that in another blog though, this article will speak of what happened before that Resurrection day - The Passover. 

These are our first decorations of Spring.   They come out and are recognized at our house days before any of the little bunnies and chicks and baskets and eggs.  Aren't they beautiful?   REAL TRUTH is always more beautiful, more special, more significant than our human imaginations.  There is nothing wrong with the silly typical fun decorations of  this spring season, but first we must know and practice what we believe and find to be real and true, and always make a firm distinction between the two, thus we bring out the Seder Plate and the Haggadah and place two pretty candles on the table with our finest china.  Special dishes are selected to be used during the service for certain times. 

 I like to design the Haggadah that we use each year.  Some years they are a new design, and some years we pull out one from the past.  It is basically the same service, but I might make new covers or rearrange a few things from year to year.  I place one at each plate on the table.  Sometimes I also print (as favors for each person to take home with them) an eight part beautifully illustrated devotional booklet that gives more of the details of the stories within the story with a reading for each day of the 7 Days of Unleavened Bread that follow immediately after Passover.

My family and I were not born Jewish.  We are Christians.  Our intent is not to imitate the Jews, but to follow the scriptures.  We hold the nation of Isreal and the people in the land close to our hearts.  We know this is the custom that Our Savior Jesus Christ taught and we only wish to imitate Him.  Through Him we feel we have been ADOPTED into the Kingdom of God.  We feel that Christ has made it possible for us to be added into that old, old olive tree with the deep, deep roots.  So we pray that our observance does not cast any disrespect to our Jewish brothers and sisters.  We simply stand in awe of the wonder of their amazing history as a nation.  We also feel our God is the same and the God of ALL nations.   So it is that we gather at the table of Our Father each year to keep His traditions and honor His Word. 

We have discovered that God's family gatherings always tell us another part of His great story!  This is the way we chose to pass our Christian heritage down to our children.  They must know Our Father's stories!  If not for the Nation of Israel observing the Passover and always keeping the torah alive, we would not have been able to know our Messiah! 

He is our Passover Lamb!

He is the True Meaning behind the Passover Celebration!

The Passover Story shadows His atonement for our sins.  Leaving Egypt and the bondage of slavery is the same as leaving a sin filled life and coming into the freedom of The Kingdom of Heaven.  It all ties together, but you will not see all the details until you observe the Passover in the same manner that the Israelites observed it, adding the full meaning of knowing that Our Deliverer has come, not only as Moses leading us out of slavery, but now as Jesus Christ, leading us away from the slavery of sin.  The outcome is our freedom!   In light of the fact that we are now free, I have added a song to our celebration this year that I feel is very appropriate.  I'll attach it below for you to listen to.  It is Matt Redman singing "We Are The Free."  You may find it on You-Tube later if you wish to use it in your celebration too this year:

It is perfectly okay to open the celebration with the joy of our freedom in this song!

Though we may add a few modern touches here and there, we do use the typical Messianic Seder, keeping it as Hebraic as possible, and we add music, dance, video stories and whatever else God puts on our hearts to emphasize in the season with His story. 

We tell the story in a million different ways each year.

  
We serve a full meal, but never until we've told the story!




Passover, and life in general, is simply all about telling the story.