Life has gotten pretty strange lately. This is an understatement. I woke up this morning with heavy eyes and a great deal of soreness in my limbs. We've been walking all day and frequently long hours into the night. With the level of exhaustion my body has endured you might assume that sleep would come easily but instead its been rather elusive. I repeatedly, without warning, wake to the sound of my own horrified screams. All I can see is blood. It's pouring from every surface, every crevice, every square inch is covered and I try to run. I try to escape but my legs are so heavy, I pump my arms and strain my core forward but my effort is in vain. I cannot move. And just as they are closing in I awake to the sight of my son's horrified face. Although, of late, his face is filled with less terror and more fatigue. Muddled in with these emotions is a touch of irritation one which he attempts to conceal but I see right through. This is how I know the night terrors have been coming with even greater regularity. This morning, he touched my back, as if to comfort me, then rolled over only to quickly return to sleep.
I often, more so that I would like to confess, slip into self pity mode. But when I grab my son's hand and the skin is smooth, no longer callused and blistered. I rejoice. We are free. We do not operate any longer by their rules or regulations. The kind of rules that govern a child, an eight year old boy, to work alongside men three times his size and stature and be expected to keep up. We do not operate any longer under a regime of fear but instead one of freedom. We are not alone. There is pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. And it never leaves. It is an ever constant reminder that our God, Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who promised to rescue us and redeem us has done so.
I know this to be true. And yet as we settled in for the night and watched as the sun danced closer to the horizon line we glimpsed, every so subtly, movement off in the distance. Speechless, no one said a word. Silence, as if speaking with our mouths what we knew to be true with our eyes would make it more real, more eerily tangible. We stood still. Motionless for what seemed to be hours. "Mom" my son pleaded, "We have to go. We have to run." And there I was. My worst nightmare coming true. Sure that my attempt to propel my legs into motion would fail. That those nights filled with terror weren't just memories of the past but premonitions of the future.
These next hours are scarred with a gamut of emotions; terror, adrenaline, doubt, horror, fear, wonderment, and relief. So jumbled are they that I don't know where one trails off and the other picks up. I hear voices echo in my head from whom they come, this I cannot remember;
"Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us here?"
"We're going to die here, you know."
"Why didn't you just leave us alone? Let us serve the Egyptians?"
"Better to serve the Egyptians than to die here."
I see the Sea stretched for miles before us and then in a moment, unparalleled to any other I have experienced, the waters begin to separate. You would fail to believe even if you had witnessed it with your own eyes as I did. A wind came and drove the sea back creating a wall of water stretching towards the heavens on to my right and my left. And dry, not a single drop of water, dry land emerged forming a pathway for us. We all exchanged looks of awe and wonder, there were not words to say. Could this really be happening? Were we already dead and dreaming this? But it wasn't a dream. It was, in fact, a reality...
A Devotional Thought:
I mentioned this passage of Scripture (Exodus 13-14) briefly in a previous blog post but I was so stirred by some of it's words that I felt forced to return to it. Specifically, something Moses said when addressing the Israelites,
"Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance that the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today, you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still." (Exodus 14:13-14)
In the verses following this compelling statement we see God do just as Moses said He would. He fights for His people here's a few ways how:
The angel of God moves from the front of the traveling Israelites to stand behind them along with the pillar of cloud, "coming between the armies of Israel and the armies of Egypt." (vs. 19,20). It goes onto say, "Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side; so neither went near each other all night long." (vs. 20)
God proceeds to separate. Yep, you read it right, separate, the Red Sea as described in my writing exercise above. Enough said.
The Egyptians, not the brightest tools in the shed, decide it is still a good idea to pursue the Israelites, despite the face that there is an angel of God and a pillar of cloud standing in their way. And, get this, in verse 24 the Bible actually says, "In the last watch of the night God looked down from the pillar of cloud." I mean, was He just sitting on top of it? Just chillin' (yep I just used that word to describe God) perched precariously, a front row seat for the show He is about to put on? I don't know that this is the case but it sure is amusing to ponder. And so, despite, like I said, regardless of these fairly insurmountable obstacles, the Egyptians continue to follow the Israelites until God does two things; one, throws them into confusion and two, causes the wheels on their chariots to fall off making driving an impossibility. Then and only then do they finally conclude that God, who may have turned out to be a teensy bit more powerful than them, holds the reigns here and they remark to one another, "Let's get away from these Israelites." You think? "The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt."
What happens next is fairly gruesome. So I won't go into details. Moral of the story if you're going to wage war against God, you will lose. Every time. No exceptions. Now, aside from the above statement, I can ascertain several other truths about God from this passage that carry a great deal of weight in my every day goings on. One, I do have enemies. No, they do not look like a group of hairy chariot driving Egyptians. They do however, come in the form of complacency, selfishness, misplaced anger, lapses of patience, entanglement in the small stuff, and the list goes on. And two, God's words to me are the same as the words He gave Moses to speak, "I WILL FIGHT FOR YOU, YOU NEED ONLY BE STILL." God, the master strategist, is more than able to take down these enemies. The great news, no, the remarkable and life-changing news is that He's got my back. And they are many a time when I feel incapable to wage this war on my own. Sure, he told Moses to stretch out his staff, He asked the Israelites to step out onto the dry land created by the schism in the separated waters and they had to trust He literally was going to hold these waters in his hands. But the rest, the hard part, was up to Him. There isn't one day I am not reminded of a lost battle, of my shortcomings as a wife, a mother, a friend. But then I call to my mind that though I may lose a battle here or there, God always wins the war. Sometimes I need only BE STILL. His grace is sufficient for me, for His power is made perfect in my weakness.
I don't know where this will find you today. Or what kind of enemies you are battling. But believe in the good news, the remarkable and life changing news, that God will fight for you, you need only be still. He's got your back. Trust that the God, who's never lost a battle, is on your side.
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