"...And you shall not break a bone of it (the Pesach offering)." (12:46)

In the Second World War, during the "blitz" on London, large numbers of families were evacuated to safer areas. Sometimes, the family itself was divided, with some children evacuated to places as far as Canada, while other children stayed with their parents in the relative safety of the English countryside.

One can well imagine the tremendous outpour of emotion when the war ended and these families were reunited. But after the initial overwhelming emotion, it became clear that the bond between the parents who had stayed with their children was far closer than their relationship with those children from whom they had been separated for more than four years.

We think that because we love our children we give to them. The reverse, however, is closer to the truth: Because we give to our children, we love them. Every time you get up in the middle of the night to get your child a glass of water or to change a diaper, you are giving, and that leads to love. What was lacking in the relationship between the parents and their evacuated children? Four years of not getting up in the middle of the night to give them a glass of water.

The same is true in our relationship with Hashem: People often say "I would love to have your faith! But I just don't feel it!" The truth of the matter is that doing leads to feeling. When you "give to Hashem" by doing what Hashem wants you to do, it's the spiritual equivalent of getting up in the middle of the night to give your child a glass of water.

That is why Hashem gives us so many mitzvos to help us remember the Exodus. If we just needed a memorial, wouldn't eating a little matza be enough? But Hashem gives us a multitude of mitzvos so that we will be deeply affected emotionally, and our hearts will be drawn to a powerful love for our Creator.

"And it shall be a sign upon your arm, and an ornament between your eyes, for with a strong hand Hashem took us out of Egypt." (13:16)

When Hashem created the world, there was no doubt it was He who had brought everything into existence, that He knew all that was going on in the world and that He was involved in the smallest event that happens in this world.

From the time of Enosh, Adam's grandson, people started to make mistakes about G-d. Some people denied G-d altogether.

Others conceded the existence of a divine power, but said that he was so removed and exalted that he only had knowledge of the spiritual realm, but didn't know what was going on down in this world.

Yet a third group admitted to a god who knows what is happening in the lower realms, but he isn't interested in what we do. In other words, he created the Universe, and then, as it were, went off to play golf.

G-d decided once and for all to quash these mistakes. Through a series of miraculous events, by altering nature, G-d would show that He creates and controls nature.

The plagues of Egypt were these miraculous events.

But how can the mere alteration of nature prove that G-d created nature? The fact that I can fix a car doesn't prove that I can make one.

To answer this, we have to understand the nature of this change in nature on a deeper level.

When G-d created the world, He did so with Ten Utterances: "In the beginning..." "Let there be light..." etc. The Ten Plagues were the reverse of the Ten Utterances. They were their negative counterparts. The first utterance corresponds to the tenth plague, the second utterance to the ninth plague, etc.

For example: The second utterance, "Let there be light" corresponds to the ninth plague, the plague of darkness. The plague of darkness was not just an absence of light; rather, G-d changed the whole order of Creation, so that light became the absence of darkness. Instead of there being photons of light which pierce a black nothingness, during the plague of darkness photons of darkness pierced a white nothingness.

Now we can understand why these plagues showed that G-d creates and controls nature. For these were not diversions of the normal current of nature, but rather the re-creation of nature itself.