Have you ever been backed into a corner? Or felt that way. You’re in a sticky situation with no way out.
The Israelites must have felt that way when they faced the Red Sea.
When God led the Israelites out of Egypt, they were not an army. They were tribes and families. In fact, the Lord deliberately avoided a route through Philistine country (which would have been shorter) because, ‘If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt’ (Ex 13: 17).
So imagine men, untrained for battle, yet nervously holding anything that might pass as a weapon, alongside their wives and children, realizing that a highly trained and cruel Egyptian fighting force is bearing down on them, with desert on either side and a vast body of water in front of them.
They were literally caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Most people know the rest of the Bibles’ most famous story. Under the Lord’s command, Moses, standing at the water's edge, stretched out his hand over the sea, which promptly parted. The stunned Israelites walked across a dry seabed, but as the Egyptian army pursued them Moses lifted his hand again, and tons of water crashed back into place crushing every soldier and chariot.
What strikes me about this story is how God created an answer to their prayers. His solution was original, to say the least, and completely unexpected.
Of course, many have speculated how God might have wrought this miracle, with explanations ranging from Tsunamis to quirks within fluid dynamics to a phenomenon known as ‘wind setdown’ (the text tells us that ‘the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind’ – 14: 21). There does seem to be a tendency among us humans to want to explain supernatural things!
The point I want to make though is that, at the exact moment of greatest need, a miracle occurred completely out of left field. No-one saw it coming! At the point where no person could see a way out of their calamitous situation, God re-wrote the rules of nature and triumphantly presented a new solution. He not only provided a way of escape for the Israelites, He also completely destroyed the threat on their backs.
Sometimes I try to imagine how God might answer my prayers, but then I only see limits instead of the infinite possibilities. I try to look at logical solutions to my problems but forget that God’s brain is bigger than mine. Even when I try to think outside the box for a way forward, I fail to remember that God is more than able to get rid of the box altogether!
It goes without saying that God often uses the natural for his purposes. We know that! We rightly pray that He will act through the expertise of surgeons when a loved one is facing an operation and we know that He invented the laws of science. We know that God gave us extraordinary abilities to design and make and build, but how easy it is to only look there.
If our Lord is a creator, then can He also bring a solution out of nowhere? I think so because nothing is impossible with God.
The best is yet to come. God bless – Terry
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