Got Your Nose

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Today's reading, titled Got Your Nose, was written by Mike Whitmer. Why are the statue's noses broken? That's the number one question visitors ask Edward Bleiberg, curator of Egyptian art at the Brooklyn Museum.

Bleiberg can't blame it on normal wear and tear. Even two-dimensional painted figures are missing noses. He surmises that such destruction must have been intentional. Enemies meant to kill Egypt's gods. It's as if they were playing a game of Got Your Nose with them. Invading armies broke off the noses of these idols so they couldn't breathe.

Really? That's all it took? With gods like these, Pharaoh should have known he was in trouble. Yes, he had an army and the allegiance of a whole nation. The Hebrews were weary slaves led by a timid fugitive named Moses. But Israel had the living God, and Pharaoh's gods were pretenders.

Ten plagues later, their imaginary lives were snuffed out. Israel celebrated their victory in Exodus 12 and 13 with the festival of unleavened bread when they ate bread without yeast for a week. Yeast symbolizes sin, and God wanted his people to remember their rescued lives belong entirely to him. Our Father says to idols, got your nose, and to his children, got your life. Serve the God who gives you breath and rest in his loving arms. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Exodus chapter 12 verses 12 through 19. On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt.

I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. This is the day you are to commemorate. For the generations to come, you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord, a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day, remove the yeast from your houses. For whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day, hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat.

That is all you may do. Celebrate the festival of unleavened bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. In the first month, you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day.

For seven days, no yeast is to be found in your houses, and anyone, whether foreign or native born, who eats anything with yeast in it, must be cut off from the community of Israel. Let's pray. Loving God, thank you for the annual reminder of Passover in which we remember how you delivered the Israelites from the Egyptians. We also thank you for the way in which you passed over us when you rescued us from our sin on the cross, and offered us a way back to you. We pray that you would fill us with love for others and the courage to tell them about the sacrifice Jesus made, that they may believe and be saved. Thank you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.