Dear Readers,
I hope you’ve enjoyed the past few installments of short stories. I’ve certainly enjoyed writing them, and you can expect another around Christmastime! But this quarter, I offer mere musings and a shorter read than usual.
This summer I learned to swim, and I’m gradually gaining confidence in the water. The absolute best day – by far – was the day I finally learned to tread water. Not only do I have to relax (in water?!), but I have to use a reasonable amount of skill without tensing up. I really, really want to keep my face above water at all times, and I’m willing to exert a great deal of effort to that end. But, as I discovered, panicking leads to sinking.
It occurred to me sometime after I coughed up a particularly caustic splutter of chlorinated water that this is a lot like the central teaching in Christianity: We are made to love, serve and worship God, and to do His will in all things. We are characters in God’s great story, and the trick is to let go and join our will with whatever His will is. Each moment, whether we enjoy it or not, comes vetted by His providence. That can be very hard to see and hard to accept at times, but the saints bear witness to the unshakable inner peace that comes from surrender. Learning to float in a spiritual sense doesn’t mean that we always survive, but it does mean that our soul breathes in the Spirit constantly, giving us spiritual life.
All my swimming lessons led me to reflect on the Bible stories about water survival. The parting of the Red Sea is my favorite, because it’s so visual, my mind snaps another photograph for every one or two verses. The Egyptians were hot in pursuit with their chariots and weapons, and the Israelites were doomed, as measured by their own resources. Burdened with their elderly and their children, the fugitive Israelites were loaded up with provisions for the desert, and they were unarmed. They turned to God, and through Moses, He parted the sea, allowing them to cross on dry land. (It wasn’t even muddy?) When the Israelites had safely crossed, the Lord told Moses to raise his hands over the water again. He did. This time, the water flowed over the Egyptian pursuers, and they washed up dead on the shore.
Some rely on chariots, others on horses, but we on the name of the Lord our God. They collapse and fall, but we stand strong and firm.” —Psalm 20: 8-9
I’m sure we’ve all wondered why the Israelites had to walk between towering walls of water. The waves were stacked up like death on either side of them, a mental image I’ve stored as possibly the greatest threat of all time, and God did follow through on that threat to the Egyptians! Why did God set it up so that the Israelites were made to tremble for their lives twice in the same day?
God had options: Walking on water, miraculous boat, eagles carrying them over (sorry, Tolkien) for a few examples. God wanted this people for Himself, so He gifted them with this visceral experience of placing their lives in His hands. Even so, God would subsequently forgive the many times they forgot and acted as though they couldn’t trust God. Of all God’s options at the Red Sea, He chose the one that would leave the most lasting impression on the hearts of His people. He wanted them (!), which is such an amazing gift, it more than accounts for the dramatic means He uses to convert them.
But my swimming lessons didn’t go that well at first. In fact, I inhaled a lot of chlorinated water and sometimes felt like I was drowning. So naturally, my mental camera drifted to take the Egyptians’ perspective.
Have you ever wondered whether there were some Egyptians who remembered the plagues well enough to look at the towering water and pause? Really picture it: A sea piled up on both sides of where you intend to walk. You’re not connected with whatever power controls this water. It feels ominous. In fact, it is hair-raising. At least one guy had to have pretended his horse was lame or a chariot wheel had cracked. Any memory of the past several chapters would prompt some sort of excuse! One guy has got to have held back and watched. Maybe he tried to convince his best friend to do the same thing. After all, did they really need the Israelite slaves so badly? Couldn’t the Egyptians just let go?
[N.B. The Bible says that God hardened the hearts of the Egyptians, and not one of the charioteers survived. I like to read this as an example of Old Testament hyperbole. Disagree with me as you wish, and for my part, we can still be friends, no problem. I know I’m being fanciful!]
The deadly fault of the Egyptians wasn’t the fact that they worshiped many gods, although this contributed. And it wasn’t the dehumanization of others through slavery, although that is abhorrent and contributed to their hardness of heart. Pharoah had proven to be unteachable in his stubbornness, and the charioteers who obeyed him paid the price. God seems to sentence the charioteers to death on account of their tenacious desire to have their own way, when God was clearly saying “no.”
The Egyptians had already lost their first-born children and literally sent the Israelites away! Now they obeyed the order to chase after the Israelites? The Egyptians knew this God was a powerful worker of plagues, and that he was more powerful than any of their “gods.” They also had it on good authority that God was calling the Israelites to worship Him in a particular place. The Egyptians merely feared that the Israelites would not return to their enslavement. They feared losing something they wanted, something they decided they couldn’t live without.
So let’s imagine that one cautious charioteer, the unsubstantiated product of my imagination, who hit a rock on purpose. He broke a wheel and got left behind in the race to catch up with the fleeing Israelites. After watching the waves crash down on all his friends, how did that Egyptian live? Did he know that he was created and chosen by the same God? Did he want to be in a relationship with that God, or was he angry after witnessing so much death? Did he go back home or wander? Would he have imagined that God was angry with him and perhaps fled in terror, hoping to outrun the God of the Israelites?
I wish I could go back in time and tell him that God loved him and even the charioteers who drowned. Maybe he already knew, like Balaam, the non-Hebrew prophet who spoke oracles and saw angels of the Lord in the Book of Numbers. It’s hard to imagine him returning home unchanged after so much loss. Bearing in mind that this Egyptian is a product of my own imagination and hopes, I further imagine that God saw in this Egyptian the slightest inclination to let go of his own will and join it with God’s. I’d like to imagine that this Egyptian was rewarded.
Certainly, the Israelites were changed, even though the lesson of trust required repetition. All of us need so much patience from God. In fact, one of my favorite quotes from St. Teresa of Avila is, “If this is the way you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few!” It’s a funny quote, because it’s so relatable, yet we don’t expect it from a saint. Teresa had been thrown from her horse on a journey as a lone woman out to do the Lord’s work, so she blamed God and shouted at Him. She was still learning to trust Him and to join her will to His.
The saints had a journey of transformation to go through, even once they knew what their purpose in life was. They didn’t start out with perfect trust and calm. Saint Teresa’s terrible headaches, people who opposed her calling, and thousands of pedantic inconveniences were all a part of that journey toward perfection.
This summer has ushered significant changes into my life, changes that I’ve been working towards for a long time. These are happy changes, but they are still stressful and sometimes scary. Most of all, this has impressed on me the need to seek out God’s will with more humility than I have ever shown before. And when it feels like I’ve taken on too much, Saint Teresa of Avila’s words written after a lifetime of growing in trust have been my go-to:
Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. All things pass away. God never changes. Patience obtains all things. He who has God lacks nothing. God alone suffices.
These are the words of a saint further along her conversion journey. I’m sure the saint felt out of her depths on occasion while founding new convents, making real estate deals, traveling alone, and sifting through the remarks of her opponents for constructive criticism that helped her reach for perfection. What I know of her biography makes these words all the more powerful for me. She points to a delicate balance between being skillfully prepared and knowing when to surrender her will all over again to God.
I reject the idea that God never gives us more than we can handle. He absolutely does give us more than we alone can handle, and He does it expressly so that we have no option besides relying on Him. We’ll spiritually drown if we don’t. These scary, sometimes overwhelming situations are a gift, although they may not feel like it at the time.
So, as your sister in Christ, I say you’re not wrong. God is throwing more at you than you can handle, and it would be easy to panic like a drowning victim. It seems to me that the key is to stay relaxed and to trust. Every situation comes vetted by the providence of God. So use the skills that little, finite you have at your disposal to do what seems best in every situation. And then trust. Don’t let anything disturb you. Even through the shadow of death, and it’s always just a shadow, you’re still enveloped in God’s loving embrace forever.