Daily Lesson for March 16, 2020

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 16 verses 1 through 8:

Observe the month of Abib by keeping the passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. 2 You shall offer the passover sacrifice to the Lord your God, from the flock and the herd, at the place that the Lord will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3 You must not eat with it anything leavened. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it—the bread of affliction—because you came out of the land of Egypt in great haste, so that all the days of your life you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt. 4 No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days; and none of the meat of what you slaughter on the evening of the first day shall remain until morning. 5 You are not permitted to offer the passover sacrifice within any of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you. 6 But at the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name, only there shall you offer the passover sacrifice, in the evening at sunset, the time of day when you departed from Egypt. 7 You shall cook it and eat it at the place that the Lord your God will choose; the next morning you may go back to your tents. 8 For six days you shall continue to eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly for the Lord your God, when you shall do no work.

Today we are given the command for the remembrance and keeping of the Passover, a yearly festival which for us takes on eery meaning in the age of COVID-19.

Now we see new and perhaps ancient meaning in a yearly festival to help a nation of people remember how to stay safe and indoors in a clean house in the midst of a plague which worsened due to the nation’s leaders’ — Pharoah’s and his court’s — unwillingness to take it seriously.

“Be warned,” the Lesson seems to say, “this is what you will have to do should such affliction arise again.

“And this, the Passover, is your practice.”

Be warned indeed.

And be spared . . .


NOTE: We are continuing to read the whole Bible through this year. As you can see, there’s a whole lot of timeless stuff in there. Tomorrow’s Lesson will be from Deuteronomy chapters 21 through 23.