Your way was through the sea,
your path through the great waters;
yet your footprints were unseen.
Go down to just about any African American church in the south and stay long enough though the service and you'll finally hear the preacher begin and the congregation end in call and response fashion that great refrain of a people long-oppressed yet hopeful for and even sure of deliverance: "God will make a way . . . Out of no way."
Echoed throughout generations, the refrain captures the prevailing theme of the Exodus story -- that God will surely act to save His people, even if they cannot see how it might be possible, and even if the deliverance comes by such a seemingly impossible direction as the Red Sea. The preacher's call and the people's response is a statement of faith and rallying cry all in one. It heartens all, reminding the people that no matter how bad things get they must hold their hopes and trust that God can yet even still make a way.
There is an old Talmudic tradition that says that when the Israelites came to the edge of the Red Sea the waters did not immediately part. They had to wade in -- first ankle, then knee, then waist, and then neck deep. The story says that it wasn't until the waters had risen all the way up to the Israelites' noses and were about to drown them that finally the parting began.
At some point in life we all come to our own Red Sea. And though we can't know how, we know deep within us that God's path is through the great waters. And so we walk. And though we cannot see them at first, if we keep walking we discover that God's footprints go before us.
But we can only discover this by wading in -- deep in. For this is the only way God makes the way out of no way.
No comments:
Post a Comment