I recall the sermon I heard at my ten year high school reunion. Considering the frequency with which I forget why I went to the kitchen, or how long it has been since I changed the sheets, this is surprising to me. 

 

The story was crossing the Red Sea. The minister talked about an oxymoron. 

 

"Stand still and go forward."

 

The Children of Israel, or as my daughter used to say the "kids of Israel", were up against two threats. The body of water in front of them offered no passage. But the army of Pharoah was thundering toward them from behind. Both looked like imminent death. The Lord told Moses to reach out his rod over the sea, and command the people to both stand still and go forward. In pausing to observe the moment, they could plum the depths of God's miracle. In stepping into the shallows of an ocean, they responded in trust.

 

What stays with me is that they walked into inhospitable conditions, before it became clear that they would be safe. Perhaps some of the mothers looked askance at Moses, begging for proof that their little ones would be safe. Yet it seems that the sequence was different than that. Believe first. Before credence becomes merely ornamental. 

 

It is of course easier to have faith after things turn out well. Surely God is in His heaven when the sun pours a ribbon of light across a field in early spring. But He was there too when torrential rains caused a flood in my mother's apartment, drenching everything she owned. Her insurance kicked in to build an apartment on our home for her, the one we had signed a contract on a few days before, which continues to bless us fifteen years after she died. 

 

I recently read the story behind the song Sounds of Silence. Garfunkel befriended a fellow student who went blind in college, and became his constant companion. One day Garfunkel told him that he had to leave him to find his way back to campus alone. It was a terrifying few hours, but the blind student made it. In reality, Garfunkel never left his side. But the young man discovered that he could navigate a dark world. The song Garfunkel later wrote shot to the top of the charts, and the young man became a successful businessman who contributed to blindness research. 

 

Many of us know how the Red Sea story ends up. I doubt that even the most imaginative of us could have concocted such an unorthodox solution, much less carried it into reality. Which is why it still lifts my hesitant feet thousands of years later.