In meeting and mastering all the various things that may confront us, the guidance we get when we turn to God certainly can be delightfully surprising. The Bible describes the adventures of a vast crowd of newly freed slaves, all following their leader, Moses, away from Egypt into an unknown future. Then this huge crowd halted, blocked by the Red Sea. Looking back from the direction they’d come, they saw a most disheartening sight. The army of the country they were escaping was coming to recapture them. Could they even have imagined any possible path to victory that day?
If we could interview some of those people about what appropriate solutions might be to what appeared an insurmountable crisis, maybe some of them would have thought that boats could take them across the sea to safety. Or that the army of Pharaoh would become lost in the desert forever. Or maybe that they could just give themselves up and return to slavery. It is doubtful that a single individual would have come up with the Red Sea-splitting solution! But in answer to prayer, the waters of the Red Sea parted, and the children of Israel walked forward to their permanent freedom (see Exodus 14:5–30).
While we may not be in the sights of a Pharaoh’s army, we certainly can faithfully pray and listen for God’s guidance today. Like those former slaves, we may feel stuck and, try as we might, fail to come up with any solution. It is God alone who saves us, just as God alone saved the children of Israel.
