Canter Bridge

Much of the sinewy stuff of biblical faith is about showing up. We are given few levers over events, circumstances, and the outcomes that in retrospect we bundle together and label ‘history’. The core of our work is to present ourselves and to wait, not a passive, inactive waiting but a tour de force of preparedness for whatever happens.

After rehearsing the obligations of the law and its statutes and judgments, enough to keep Israel busy for generations, Moses anticipates an exquisite moment that may be overheard in the bosom of some Israelite home:

When your children ask you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the LORD our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your children, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.’

Moments like this one, the hypothetical, generation-bridging, soul-awakening instant that occurs when a child unexpectedly pipes up and begs to understand, are precious. They only occur if the parents have practiced the learned craft of obeying the statutes day in and day out so that they become woven into the rhythms of life shared under one roof.

It is significant that the parents’ reply to their inquisitive child begins as it does. A son asks for the ‘meaning of the decrees and statutes and ordinances’. The parent responds in terms of rescue from slavery.

So does the Mosaic instinct privilege divine initiative and the experience of grace over duty. So does life with YHWH, for all its lethal dangers and uncommon demands, issue in gratitude. Do does the answer to legal duty begin a recollection of the most astonishing rescue.

So does a child—one day to become a mother or father—learn that he too was whipped in Egypt, summoned to nocturnal flight from his house of servitude, protected from the desert’s terror, introduced into a wide land with his name on it.

He must know this, for one day his son will unexpectedly inquire, not about liberation but about duty. Lowering himself to one knee, he will talk to his son about being set free.