“That is how the Lord rescued Israel from the hand of the Egyptians that day. And the Israelites saw the bodies of the Egyptians washed up on the seashore.”

Exodus 14:30

Everyone is singing, but I still am in shock.

It has been fifty and three years. That is a long time to live in fear. Always worried, trying to stay alive. Doing just enough to make it through another day. 

Have you ever dreaded going to bed because you knew you would have to wake up the next day not knowing if you could survive another day?

Fifty and three years, that is a long time to have constant sorrow and gnawing anxiety in your heart. A very long time. Not much of a life – always being chased by the shadow of death.

If I didn’t do enough I would be threatened: Starvation, humiliation, not able to provide for my wife and family. But he didn’t care. All he could do with his cold hard face is laugh at my misery. His sneer would invade my dreams, awaken me at midnight, greet me in the bright dread of the morning.

Lash in hand, always ready. Crack! Down would strike another blow. I hated that whip. But I couldn’t quit. There was too much at stake. So I would submit, holding back my rage, biting my tongue with my front two teeth.

I started hearing whisperings. A Prophet has come. He promised salvation. Being set free from the sting of the whip, the dark dread, and the man with the cold black eyes, sounded too good to be true.

I didn’t believe it. How could I believe it? Fifty and three years, that is more than enough time to form unmovable convictions, the cruel years teach you that only fools believe in dreams. Life under the lash was all I knew, it was my lot in life. To hope for deliverance would only set me up to be let me down, causing a more severe spiral of depression.

You have to be an idiot to believe in miracles. Expect the worst; no need to hope for the best when the only best you know is simply surviving another day.

But soon the whisperings became the happenings, strange happenings. Blood, frogs, gnats, flies, hail, and darkness. Every day there was another story that was extremely odd, but it started to ring true. Maybe this Prophet was different?

Maybe, just maybe, he could save?

I was told to kill the young lamb that was recently born in our flock. My kids loved that lamb! It was so soft and white, innocent. But the Prophet said to “kill it!” What right does he have to tell me what to do? My wife convinced me to trust him, just this once. Even if it meant sacrificing such a sweet creature.

It was a dark night. 

I took the lamb out back, placed my left hand over his soft eyes, and with the right, I cut his throat with a sharp steel blade. Out came a stream of the animal’s life in blood. I collected it in a ceramic basin my wife used for storing milk. Instead of white, this time it held red blood, dark, thick blood from the little spotless lamb that had just been slain.

The Prophet said to take the blood and wipe the doorframes. On the top, down the sides, and then go in the house and wait. So we waited while we ate the lamb. The Prophet told us to be ready to leave at the crack of dawn, so make bread without yeast, and have all our belongings packed and ready to carry on our backs. We were leaving for good.

This sounded like crazy talk. That is until I heard the screams. The whole city was filled with loud cries, moans, and pleading for it to stop. Stop the killing, stop the “Avenger”! The Prophet was right, the angel of death had come.

And yet, we were still alive.

The sun rose the next morning. But on this morning there was no lash. My family, friends, neighbors said a new day had come. The Prophet was leading us into a new world, he promised.

Do I trust him? 

As we left something felt wrong. We all trusted the Prophet, but where was he leading us? Into the desert. And worse than that, to a dead-end by the Sea of Reeds. Literally, it was a dead-end because we could hear the horses and the cursing of the men coming for revenge, loud was the battle cry. Most of the soldiers lost a brother the night before. They wanted vengeance, they wanted our blood.

“Just watch and wait,” the Prophet calmly said.

“Watch what, our children dying at the hands of our enemy? Watch what, panic and annihilation of those we love?”

He stretched his hand over the water. It split in two, a highway formed between the waters. Was this really happening? A giant column of fire formed between us and the soldiers that were coming to kill. 

It stayed until we crossed.

And then it disappeared leaving nothing between us and their swords. The soldiers’ fury was at a fever pitch. They charged. But right as our feet touched the other side of the sea, the water fell back, landing on top of the angry horde. Crushing them.

The singing immediately began, “He has hurled both horse and rider into the sea.”

I was overtaken with emotion. I couldn’t speak. Was this real? Was salvation possible? Can I hope in hope? And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a mass of bodies bobbing in the water, dead bodies. The giant swells of the sea were bringing the soldiers who wanted us dead to shore. 

As the sound of the rolling waves hit the corse sand and rocks on the shoreline, I noticed a familiar figure. It was him, the one with the dark eyes and twisted smile, he was dead! My lifelong adversary was now a floating corpse who could never threaten again. No longer would he laugh at my misery.

I had nothing to fear.

The Prophet was right. All I had to do is trust him. That is all, trust him. Because miracles do come true.