Patience, You’re Not Like Everybody Else! A Passover Story
By: Evelyn C. Pointer
There is a girl named Patience who lives somewhere else. It doesn’t matter the name of the city that she lives in because you’ve never been there and probably won’t ever go there. Patience always assumed she was an ordinary girl just like everybody else, until she turned 9 and began to notice certain differences. She was neither, in her own opinion, very beautiful or very ugly. Her parents said she was beautiful, but don’t parents have to promise to do that when they let them take their baby from the hospital? She felt she was not too smart and fortunately not too dumb. Not like the boy who lived next door to her who never did his homework and always watched Sponge Bob, and had a collection of worms. She had a light golden brown complexion and long thick black braids. One day her mother cut her bangs and now they tended to stick straight up in the air no matter what she did. Her mother’s bangs never stuck straight up in the air. It was so unfair. She was a bit skinny but she could run faster than all of the other children in her class. She lived with her parents and her horrible twin brothers. Their goal in life was to torture her. They were five. Patience did not like her name. She asked her mother, “Why did you name me Patience?” Her mother thought that most of the questions that her children asked her were very funny. “Well I had to have a lot of Patience when I was expecting you so I thought that would be a good name. Ha! Ha!” “Well couldn’t you have given me a better name, like Shequisha, or Tangeray, or Diamond.” “Absolutely not”, her mother said “I wasn’t going to name MY baby some made up ghetto name.” “But, mom! Nobody else is named Patience!” “Well, you’re not like everybody else.” That was always her mother’s excuse. That wasn’t the only difference. She went to church on Sabbath, when most of her friends went on Sunday. Her parents taught her from the bible every day. She just knew she had the strictest parents in the world, even though her father called her princess, and baby girl, and her mother took her for a mother daughter lunch every month, and they all played pillow fights and had pizza and movie nights, they still did not allow her to do things like many of her friends. She could never do anything on Sabbath, even to go to Girl Scout meetings or go skating. And they didn’t let her spend the night at other children’s houses. And she could not wear really short skirts and short shorts. Even her food was different. This year her class was going to go on a wonderful all day trip to the state Capital. Everybody was going to go! There would be museums, and parks, and a visit to the capital building to meet a state senator.
And they were going to stop at Pizza Hut for lunch. “When is it?” Her mom asked. “April 20th? Isn’t that Passover? I think that’s during the week of Passover,” her mother said. “But mom, everybody’s going, I never get to do anything!”Patience said. “You do plenty young lady! But you know you can’t eat anything with leavening in it for Passover!” “But, mom! Everybody’s going, and I, I…” she ran out crying. Her mother finished cooking dinner completely ignoring the fact, as usual, that Patience was being mistreated, and that her heart was broken, and that she was crying her eyes out. To make matters worse, she had made meatloaf and green peas. Patience hated meatloaf, and her brothers always threw the green peas on her and on each other when their mother wasn’t looking. The twins never really ate any food except macaroni and cheese, cheeseburgers and Froot Loops. They never drank water, and only wanted apple juice. Later that night when her father came home, Patience tried with some success to eaves drop on their conversation from her room while she was supposed to be doing homework. Mom: “Patience wants to blah, blah, blah, blah Passover”. Dad: “Well, honey, you know what its blah, blah, blah.” Mom: “I know, but it’s gonna be hard to blah, blah.” Dad: “Patience! Come here baby!” “Yes, Daddy?” Patience said in her sweetest voice. After years of practice she learned how to coax the dimple out of her right cheek whenever she wanted something from her father. “Come over here baby girl” her dad said and put his arm around her. Patience knew she had him right where she wanted him. The dimple came out. “Your mother told me about this class trip and we decided that you should be able to go.” “Yay, Daddy! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Patience began to jump up and down and hugged her daddy. “Wait a minute little girl,” her mother said, “You can go IF I can get someone to cover for me at work, but we STILL are going to have to keep the Passover.” “OK” Patience said. “That means we won’t be able to eat the same food as everybody else. We can’t eat anything with leavening in it.” The dimple disappeared. “But we can eat Pizza, right, because you always make pizza on Passover.” “No, not Pizza Hut pizza, it has leavening in it.” “Well then, what CAN we eat?” “I’ll bring us something to eat.” “Well, what’s leavening anyway, and why can’t we eat it on Passover?” Patience pretended not to know.
Her parents looked at her. “You know that we talk about this every year. Do you remember the story about the Passover with Moses? How the Lord delivered the children of Israel out of Egypt? Do you remember the plagues?” they asked her. “Yes,” she said. “There were ten plagues, blood in the water, frogs, lice, flies, murrain, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the death of the firstborn.” Patience could not resist showing off. She had memorized the plagues since she was six, making her parents think she was smart. But of course they were required to think that! “Do you remember what the Lord told them to do on the Passover?” Her mother always liked to ask her questions, but she was prepared. “They had to kill a lamb of the first year and put his blood on the door post, so the destroying angel would pass over them and not kill any of the first born of Israel”. “Do you realize that you are a firstborn?” Her mom thought it was funny to remind her of the peril she would have been in if she had been an Egyptian back then, as if she didn’t have enough trouble today as it is, from the bad kids in her class and from the twin monsters in the bedroom next to hers. “What else, baby?” her dad asked. “They had to eat the lamb that night with their clothes on, their staff in their hands…..”Patience began. “And with bitter herbs and unleavened bread.” he finished. “But why did the bread have to be unleavened, anyway, and what’s leavening? Why is it ok to eat it other days if it’s bad to eat on Passover?” she asked. “Well”, her father told her, “let’s look in the bible. Exodus 13:8-9, read it aloud to us.” “And thou shalt shew thy son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt. And it shall be for a sign unto thee, upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the Lord’s law may be in thy mouth: for with a strong hand hath the Lord brought thee out of Egypt. Thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in his season from year to year.” She read. She could read very well. “But what is a sign, anyway?” Patience asked. “A sign is something that gives someone information or tells someone something. Keeping the Passover is a sign that you are an Israelite and that you obey God. And we do this every year to remember what God did for us, and also so that we can remember to obey the law of God, remember it said that the Lord’s law may be in thy mouth.” Her mother loved to teach. “But, that was a long time ago… and, and…” Patience began to say. “And what,” her mom asked, “Do you think that this doesn’t have anything to do with you today? Listen, child, we’re not just looking back, we’re looking to the future. The world is not going to continue forever. When Christ came and died for us, he was the Passover Lamb, that’s why we don’t have to kill a lamb today.
What’s most important is what Christ did for us. It’s Christ’s blood that will save us. His blood has a promise in it that if we obey him, that we will have eternal life. Christ kept the Passover, and we want to be just like him, and to do whatever he tells us to do. The things that we do today are just as important as the things that they did back then. The leavening that we put in bread and cakes make them rise, it changes them, just like a little sin changes you. Remember when you had the flu, how sick you got? You didn’t see the germ that made you sick because it was so small, but you sure felt terrible. Well sin is like that. Even a little sin makes your whole body dirty. One week a year we remember all of these things. We remember the Passover in Egypt, and we remember the night that our Lord and savior died, and we remember all of the things that he promised us. And when we do these things, it’s just like when the children of Israel put the blood on the doorpost, the Lord will remember us. And when all of the bad things, like the earthquakes that keep happening, and the murders and the terrible accidents happen all around us, the Lord will protect us. And when the Lord begins to destroy the earth he will deliver us like he did the children of Israel. And what I also like is that your father and I can talk to you and your brothers about these things, and it helps all of us to keep our minds focused on the word of God, so that we can obey him.” “OK, mom. What are we going to eat for lunch when we go on the trip?” Patience asked. “What about fried chicken?” her mother said. That was her favorite, her mother made the best fried chicken in the world, and it was good even when it was cold. “And we can have carrot sticks, and apples” her mother always wanted to get her to eat healthy, “And we can have homemade pound cake. Why don’t you help me make the unleavened bread, we should take some of that too.” “Maybe you can teach me how to make popovers, too” Patience liked when her mother taught her how to cook. “And, mommy” the dimple came out again, although it didn’t seem to work as well with her mom as it did with her dad, but it never hurts to try, “can I listen to your IPod….and can we have potato chips, and can I have M&Ms…and do I HAVE to sit next to you on the bus….”