I’m about to go downstairs and start our Passover seder. The sun is setting over the ocean. I can see it from my office window.
Seder means order. The service we conduct on Passover has a specific order. However, it strikes me that life has an order, too. And that much like the Israelites as they were liberated from Egypt, getting to the place we want to go seems to have an order.
In other words, it’s a process–on that often follows the same steps or route over and over again not matter where it is we want to go. No matter our goal. No matter our destination.
If we want a better marriage, a better job, better health, a clearer picture of who we are, more time, a new house…It doesn’t really matter. A process exists to get “there.” We must go through an order of events, a set of steps to make the thing we want happen or to bring it into our lives.
In fact, all of life has an order, a seder. The seasons come and go, the tides go in and out, the sun rises and sets all in an order. We live and die based on an order. Despite the fact that our lives feel chaotic, disorderly, everything proceeds day to day, hour by hour, moment by moment in an orderly fashion.
It is a seder.
So, when we feel as if we are stuck at the edge of something tough, like the Israelites at the edge of the Red Sea, there is an order to that as well. God told us to stop, go inside and get calm, then take action. Moses was told to raise his staff and the waters would part. We do something, something happens.
For every action there is an equal reaction. When you follow the steps, when you go through the seder, something happens. When you walk through into the water like Nachshon–up to his nose–the water parts. When you walk in the desert for 40 years you get to the promised land.
Seder. Order. Whether you know it or not.
