If You Didn't Put the Pepper in it...

The people are to take some of the blood 
and put it on the doorposts and above the doors of the houses 
in which the animals are to be eaten.
That night the meat is to be roasted, 
and eaten with bitter herbs and with bread made without yeast.  
~Exodus 12:7,8

My brother-in-law introduced me to tea
made from fresh ginger and black pepper.
I was skeptical.
I was not a big ginger fan,
and adding black pepper to it really lowered its appeal to me.
But I felt miserable the day he offered it to me,
and he said how much it soothed his muscles,
lessened his aches, and opened up his airways.
I found it helps me immensely.

My little Silas has been coughing.
He told me his throat hurt,
and he likes "the regular kind of cough better,
the kind that doesn't hurt right here," he said, with his hand on his chest.
I poured him some ginger and black pepper tea.

"Mom... if you didn't put the pepper in it, I would like it," he said.
"I know, honey. But the pepper is part of the medicine of it.
You have to drink it all."
He sat at the table, taking a sip, grimacing,
and measuring the tea level with a ruler.
"The pepper makes my tongue spicy."

Don't we all wish He would not add the pepper?
That we could eat the sweet without the bitter?
As we eat the bitter, though, we must say,
"Praised are you, Adonai our God, 
Ruler of the universe, 
who makes us holy through Your commandments, 
and commands us to eat bitter herbs."