Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: FINISHED (04/09/20)
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TITLE: Lily's Gift | Previous Challenge Entry
By Danja Cawood
04/16/20 -
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Simri lifted the lamb down from his muscular shoulders.
“Papa!” Milcah cried with delight as he set the lamb down in front of her. Her brothers and sisters bolted from their tiny adobe-style slave house.
“Me first, I’m the oldest!” Achim said pushing past everyone.
“Don’t grow too attached,” Simri said sternly. “It’s for the sacrifice.”
Only Asher gave a knowing nod, the others were too absorbed.
“Little Lily,” Noa said, sinking her hands into the lamb’s flawless white wool. “Like the white valley lilies Papa sometimes brings Mama.” The others agreed and laughed!
***
Four days later Simri sat hunched next to the cooking fire. “It’s twilight,” his wife Jerusha announced with gravity. Simri stood, his heart heavy. The time had come. “Bring me the lamb,” he said to Milcah, but she held onto Lily and begged, “Please Papa. Can’t you pick another lamb?”
“We must obey,” Simri said simply and pried Lily from Milcah’s grip. Noa started crying but Achim hushed her. The children knew not to oppose their father, but their eyes pled with him. Milcah cried broken-heartedly while Lily bleated wildly, struggling for freedom. Simri hesitated a moment but then set his teeth. Moses’ instructions were clear. If he didn’t smear the lamb’s blood on the lintels tonight his firstborn would die. So it would have to be Lily.
“Never name a sacrifice,” he muttered under his breath.
“It seems this YHWH does not know the way of children,” he said to his neighbor Ader when he walked outside. Ader was busy slaughtering their family’s lamb while his children cried in the background. “Why command us to pick out the lamb four days before sacrifice? It seems cruel.”
Simri looked up to heaven with regret. Could this God hear? Was He vengeful? He thought of YHWH’s power displays in Egypt and shuddered. He hoped not, or he was done for.
“Maybe He’s teaching us,” Ader said. “If there’s no pain in the offering it doesn’t mean much does it? What’s Achim worth to you?”
Maybe so, Simri nodded. He pinned Lily between his legs and put the knife against her tender neck. He gritted his teeth and flicked the knife. It had to be done. He kept his hand on her head as the last life flowed from her. “It is finished,” he finally said with relief.
After the slaughter, he dipped a bunch of hyssop into her blood and carefully smeared it across the house’s lintels. The warm blood’s metallic smell was sickening. He set the meat down next to Jerusha to roast over the fire. They were commanded to roast everything, including the head and legs and afterward burn the remains. Lily was to be a complete sacrifice.
Eating proved a somber affair. Lily’s dull eyes stared reproachfully at them from the basin of roasted meat. Milcah and Achim pushed the meat around and Noa gagged. Simri gave them a stern look but said no more. He could hardly swallow the lamb himself.
Afterward, they went to bed fully dressed in traveling clothes. Their meager belongings stood packed and ready. If Moses was right this would be their last meal in Goshen. They would soon be free people. It felt surreal. Sure, as slaves they weren’t leaving much behind but it was still all they knew. The future lay before them, new and uncertain.
Sometime during the night, they awoke from the cries. It was true! All the firstborn in Egypt were dead, from the livestock to Pharoah’s son. Never before has there been a God this powerful!
Simri hugged Achim to his chest. “Thanks be to YHWH,” he said softly. To lose Achim would’ve been a heavy blow. He thanked the little white lamb in her absence.
Just as Moses predicted they left early the next morning, commemorating 430 years of slavery to the day. As if in a dream they walked out of Egypt in full sight of their oppressors. In fact, the Egyptians begged them to leave and loaded them up with treasures to placate them. They left as free men with their heads held high.
They had no inkling that their offspring would someday include another Lily, another Lamb. His cry “It is finished!” would echo through the ages till the ends of the earth bringing life and hope to multitudes who believed. In Him they would break the bonds of slavery to sin and walk into eternity as free men with their heads held high.
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