Ruminations

Crossing My Sea

The moment was filled with emotion.  Before this group of two to three million people lay the waters of the Red Sea. Behind them rose the dust from the hoofs and chariots of their former slave-masters, the Egyptians.  There was no way to go forward.  As they faced their moment of challenge, they discovered there was room to go in only one direction—backwards!

I have been tempted again, lately to go backwards?  Backward to the "good ole days" when the prices were lower, the journeys were shorter, the trousers were longer, the weather was better, the pressure was lesser, the currency was stronger, the youth were kinder, the music was softer, and the world was safer.  My mind has this amazing ability to forget what I am meant to remember and remember what I am meant to forget.  The Israelites were no exception.  They said to Moses, "Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die?  What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?  Didn't we say to you in Egypt, 'Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians?  It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!" (Exodus 14:11-12).  As someone rightly said, "It took one night for God to take Israel out of Egypt, but it took forty years to take Egypt out of Israel!"

Return.  Go back.  But "to whom or to what?" reads the telltale sign on that dead-end road! 

In fact, the key word in the book of Hosea is "return."  The prophet uses the word 22  times in his prophesy.  The people of Israel were to seriously consider the admonition, "Come let us return to the Lord" (Hosea 6:1).

Likewise, as the Israelites stood at the edge of the Red Sea I am reminded that they were a generation that had witnessed the ten powerful plagues that befell Egypt.  They were the very people to whom the Lord had spoken in the words of Moses:  "I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.  I will take you as my own people and I will be your God" (Exodus 6:6-7).  They were also the very people whose firstborns were spared on the night of the Passover and who were being led in the wilderness by the Lord himself who had revealed himself in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

I think it strange how my mind works!  I face the waters of my Red Sea and the approaching army of present day issues, with so rich a faith experience, and yet concede that life of yesteryears was a better deal.

Yet by contrast, isn't it strange how God works?  God takes no offence.  God does not disappear.  God does not pour down his judgment.  Instead, God stands by me; ungrateful and lacking in memory.  All because it is not in God's nature to forget a promise! 

Did Moses know how God would deal with the laws of the physical world when he raised his staff over the sea?  Did Joshua know how God would work beyond the imaginings of architecture when they marched around Jericho?  Did Daniel know how God would deal with the natural instincts of lions as he was lowered into the den?  No they didn't.  All they knew was their God.  And today as well, I, Bill, who knows God, is determined to live not by explanations, but by promises.  As the old, old song goes, “I am determined; I’ve made up my mind.”  What am I waiting for?  I’m crossing my sea!