{"id":6922,"date":"2015-09-16T00:05:14","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T07:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=6922"},"modified":"2015-09-15T11:01:20","modified_gmt":"2015-09-15T18:01:20","slug":"celebrate-good-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/09\/16\/celebrate-good-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrate Good Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>\u201cCelebrate this Festival of Unleavened Bread, for it will remind you that I brought your forces out of the land of Egypt on this very day. This festival will be a permanent law for you; celebrate this day from generation to generation. The bread you eat must be made without yeast from the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month until the evening of the twenty-first day of that month. During those seven days, there must be no trace of yeast in your homes. Anyone who eats anything made with yeast during this week will be cut off from the community of Israel. These regulations apply both to the foreigners living among you and to the native-born Israelites. During those days you must not eat anything made with yeast. Wherever you live, eat only bread made without yeast.\u201d  (Exodus 12:17-20)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>God is not a dour killjoy.  He is not afraid that somewhere, somehow, someone is having a good time and he needs to stop it.  Instead, God is all about joy.  He wanted his people to happily remember what God had done for them by rescuing them from Egyptian bondage. Their rescue from Egypt was a good reason to celebrate, much as Americans celebrate Independence Day or enjoy the holiday of Thanksgiving.  God wanted the Israelites to set aside not just for an hour, or a day, but for a whole week.  Their fun was not to be cut short.<\/p>\n<p>Why no yeast at this annual party?  Unlike the modern world, where we can make or get food quickly, in ancient times, making food was a slow process. There was no fast food restaurant just around the corner.  There wasn\u2019t even any quick rising yeast for their bread machines.  And so they didn\u2019t have time to make bread the right way.  Rushed to cook plain dough, they ended up with crackers\u2014matzo\u2014instead.  To remind them of that rushed night before their deliverance, during their seven day festival they were not allowed to have normal bread, only matzo.  <\/p>\n<p>Given that the Israelites enjoyed their celebrations, we should never imagine that we are somehow less Godly, or less connected to God, or less holy because we happen to be having a good time with our friends and family.  It\u2019s spiritual to have fun.<\/p>\n<div class='kindleWidget kindleLight' ><img src=\"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-content\/plugins\/send-to-kindle\/media\/white-15.png\" \/><span>Send to Kindle<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cCelebrate this Festival of Unleavened Bread, for it will remind you that I brought your forces out of the land of Egypt on this very day. This festival will be a permanent law for you; celebrate this day from generation &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2015\/09\/16\/celebrate-good-times\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6922"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6922"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6924,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6922\/revisions\/6924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}