Vv 13-14 But Moses told the people, “Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today will never be seen again. The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.”
You’ve seen the posters – of course you have – ‘Keep calm and …..’
But if you had been an Israelite escaping from Egypt and the Egyptian cavalry were in hot pursuit, standing still and waiting for God to do something must have seemed a crazy option! Keeping calm was pretty well down the list of qualities you might expect of yourself. Times were going to come when God’s order would be to march, in silence, round the walls of Jericho (Joshua 6) and wait for God to do something – like make the walls just collapse – but right now, by the Red Sea, just stand still and wait seemed neither sensible nor safe.
Waiting seems to me to be one of the hardest options in the stress-filled and activist lifestyle to which many of us are accustomed. We want to get on with it, do something, resolve the problem ourselves. It’s the same mentality that looks at the weeds in the garden and says ‘Pull them up – they won’t just die of their own accord!’ It is the inner urge to deal with everything ourselves – the permanent ‘I can, and should, do it’ attitude.
Then we have to face the reality that there are some things we can’t fix for ourselves (like growing-old pains!) Of course, we can pray but then waiting for God’s answer seems a cop-out; shouldn’t we be doing something, NOW?
I wonder if that is how Moses actually felt before he accepted God’s way of doing things? Many of us can look back in our experience and discern God’s hand in guiding us at such moments, but at the time it was mighty tough.
It does however encourage us to trust God for our future as we wait for Him.
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