Let my people go

I'm not a great writer. Sometimes when something big happens and I want to write about it, I can't do it justice and therefore I don't write about it at all. But I can't pass up mentioning the experience that our bible study group had over the past weeks so bear with me and assume that it was much more intense in every manner than I'm describing.

We planned, prepared and led a (Messianic) Passover Seder for our church on Thursday night. A Seder is a ritual family meal to celebrate Passover, which is the remembrance of the passover of the Lord when he spared the Israelites from death of the firstborn when they were in Egypt. It also serves to celebrate the exodus of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt into freedom in the Promised Land.

For weeks, we've studied what the scriptures say about passover and planned the logistics of performing a seder to include people who have never heard of one so that they would understand it and serve dinner to a large group of people. Because of some snafus in communication, I expected we'd have about 50-80 people but instead we had 200 people register for the seder. Yikes! I think about 150 showed up but that's only my guess.

The planning was impeded by many of us missing a number of meetings and it left a lot of details to be handled at the last minute. There were too many to list here but one that will stand out in all of our minds forever is how to feed 200 people without a real kitchen on the premises.

We rented warming ovens for the food and despite great intentions and strictly following the instructions for using them, we had a fire. I don't just mean that the sternos were lit in the ovens - I mean that the ovens caught on fire. Thank God they were outside by the time they got really bad and that Kirsten and Amy got out of the kitchen when they did as well (lest they pass out from the searing heat and chemicals in the air.) The fire required the fire extinguisher and one of the ovens was so hot that the aluminum food service tray (I don't mean an aluminum foil pan) melted. According to Andy's research, aluminum melts at 1220 degrees Farenheit. Yikes.

I'm getting tired so I'll wrap up here by saying that although I felt the planning and preparation for the service was extremely stressful and frustrating, I'm already feeling the amnesic effects gained by the passage of time after such a crazy event.

Next year in Jerusalem?