Never Forsaken: Who's Watching Over You?

This is a painting that lived in my Grandma's bedroom when I was growing up. I loved laying in her bed and looking at it, wondering at how God sends His angels to watch over us. Now that my Grandma has gone on to be with Jesus, this painting lives in my house. I pray that my guests are similarly encouraged by it.

 

But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. That day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore.  Exodus 14:29-30

 The Israelites were quick to follow Moses out of Egypt, plundering their Egyptian neighbors along the way, and they were equally quick to turn on Moses and blame him when things looked rough, when they were hemmed in with the sea before them and the Egyptian army behind them. Equally, Pharaoh was quick to shoo the Israelites out of his country after the plague of the firstborn, wanting to be rid of them and the destruction that had been accounted to their God, but just after they were gone, He reconsidered the wisdom of letting them go and determined to get them back by hook or by crook!

 It’s easy to read a passage like this with the benefit of hindsight and the interpretation of the author and the commentators we have today and judge both the Israelites and Pharaoh, but how often are we like them ourselves? We might be in the depths of a dark and difficult situation, crying out to God for help, and when He provides it and we are free, we often gravitate right back to the relationship or position we were in before. Addiction would be the clearest example of this, I think. It’s pull to come back, to revisit the old experiences, the reasoning and conditioning that things surely weren’t as bad as you remembered. So, before you judge the Israelites for complaining to Moses that they were better off in Egypt (Exodus 14:11-12) or the Egyptians for their folly of going back once more on their decision to let the Israelites go (Exodus 14:5) stop and consider a time when you may have done something similar.

 As you think on this, I’d also encourage you to remember a time when you faced the impossible. Your situation didn’t make sense and there seemed no way through it. Identify with the Israelites as they faced the sea before them and the Egyptian army behind them. Perhaps you or a loved one received a terrible diagnosis. Maybe you’ve been out of work and saw no way through to pay your bills and provide for your family. There are any number of incredibly difficult, seemingly impossible situations that we can face in this life, but with our God, nothing is impossible (Matthew 19:26). We see the sea, but He sees the path He is about to make through it. We see the Egyptian army, but He just puts a barrier between us, effectively protecting us and destroying them at the same time. When we stop seeing life though the lens of our own limited nature and start seeing the hope and possibility of trusting in a God who can literally do anything – more than we could ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20-21) – then we are free to dream and trust and follow God fully.

Here’s the Thing: What looks impossible to us is merely a part of what God is using to further His incredible plan for our good and His glory. Let us not be discouraged by the seas or the Egyptian armies that we encounter in life, because our God is a God who parts the sea and then uses it to destroy the enemy pursuing us.