The Desert

In each one of us there is an Egypt and a Pharaoh and a Moses and Freedom in a Promised Land. And every point in time is an opportunity for another Exodus.

Egypt is a place that chains you to who you are, constraining you from growth and change. And Pharaoh is that voice inside that mocks your gambit to escape, saying, "How could you attempt being today something you were not yesterday? Aren't you good enough just as you are? Don't you know who you are?"

Moses is the liberator, the infinite force deep within, an impetuous and all-powerful drive to break out from any bondage, to always transcend, to connect with that which has no bounds.

But Freedom and the Promised Land are not static elements that lie in wait. They are your own achievements which you may create at any moment, in any thing that you do, simply by breaking free from whoever you were the day before.

Last Passover you may not have yet begun to light a candle. Or some other mitzvah still waits for you to fulfill its full potential. This year, defy Pharaoh and light up your world. With unbounded light.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
The Inside Story on Passover
Chabad.org

Sounds easy, doesn't it? Simply objectify your achievements and shortcomings. Make the things that keep you in chains "Egypt" and the voice that says you're no good "Pharaoh". It sounds like the John who wrote Revelation was using the same basic material when he wrote the following:

The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. -Revelation 12:9

The phrase, "who leads the whole world astray" is sometimes translated as "the accuser of the brethren". The idea is that your doubts, insecurities, and feelings of inadequacy don't actually come from you, but from an external, supernatural force or entity we refer to as Satan (Hebrew: HaSatan = "the Adversary" in English). And yet, that voice often comes from those who are closest to you, including your family and friends...and especially from yourself.

Rabbi Freeman links slavery in Egypt and the "accusing" voice of Pharaoh to the liberator Moses and freedom in the Promised Land. What his metaphor lacks is this:

The LORD replied, "I have forgiven them, as you asked. Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the LORD fills the whole earth, not one of those who saw my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times— not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their ancestors. No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it. But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it. Since the Amalekites and the Canaanites are living in the valleys, turn back tomorrow and set out toward the desert along the route to the Red Sea." -Numbers 14:20-25

Between freedom from slavery in Egypt and entry into the rest of the Promised Land is the desert. The desert is the result of fear, insecurity, lack of confidence, and lack of faith. God can and has sent a deliverer to all mankind, but although we are taught that salvation is a free gift, that doesn't mean it's effortless for us to accept that gift, open it, and then live out the contents. Accepting God and becoming a disciple of the Master isn't "as easy as rolling off the log". There can be many barriers and setbacks on the trail between "Egypt" and "Israel".

Yesterday, I wrote a blog about how we can be sitting on the keys to our own chains, and it sounds fairly easy to just get up, pick up the keys, and unlock the door to our prison. As Rabbi Freeman points out in today's Daily Dose of Torah, there is a metaphorical and spiritual connection between the Passover story and how we conduct our lives at any given point in time. Passover is a reminder of how much we have to gain and how much we have to lose, depending on which decisions we make each day. Freeman likens our achievements to mitzvot (commandments or deeds of kindness) but also to "lighting up our world" with "unbounded light".

Somewhere between the infinite darkness of a slave's life in "Egypt" and the "unbounded light" in the Land of "Israel" lies the shadowlands of the desert. We can be neither here nor there, neither a slave nor truly free. We can be in a state where we have escaped the darkness but still cannot walk into the light. Either something inside of us or something about our circumstances keeps us on the edge, as if staring into the abyss or waiting at the threshold of some gate into the unknown realms.

An entire generation was forgiven of their sins, yet died in the desert, one by one, dropping in their tracks, collapsing in the sand, because of their failure. Our existence, between birth and death, contains decisions, victories, achievements, and defeats. We succeed or we fail. We light the candle, or watch it burn out. Even on the eve of Passover, a time when there should be hope in our hearts, something can come along to smother that hope like suffocating a child in a crib. Sometimes, we stand at the edge of hope, with an infinite sky before us, and still we cannot breathe.

What do you do when you are at a wedding reception where you expect to find God and instead, the bride and groom have vanished, the room is dark, and the hall is empty?

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

“Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

“But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

“Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.

“Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

“For many are invited, but few are chosen.” -Matthew 22:1-14

Passover is not only a time when we discover how far we've come, but how woefully far we have yet to go.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.