Exodus 14:21-31
When I was ten years old our family took a tour of Universal Studios in California. The attraction I was most excited to visit was “the parting of the Red Sea.” The previous Easter/Passover, I had watched Cecil B. DeMille’s epic film, The Ten Commandments, in which a powerful Moses (Charleton Heston) holds out his arms and a clear path—bordered by walls of swirling water—emerges before the awe-struck Hebrews. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwPwRyF9RH0 I knew that the Universal Studios version wasn’t going to be as convincing, but my expectations were still unreasonably high.
We rode in a tram that was really more like a golf cart towing other golf carts until we arrived at the “Red Sea”—a pond that made the golf cart seem suddenly right at home. Our guide and tram driver provided a dramatic narrative of our journey--the Egyptians in hot pursuit, the impassable sea ahead. He said something about how we were going to drive forward and would just have to hope that the sea parted before us. The tram paused and, sure enough, a narrow section of the pond began to drain away until we were able to drive through. It was a mildly impressive feat of 1970s engineering, but it couldn’t hold a candle to the Hollywood version. I wanted my money back even though my parents had been the ones to pay the entrance fee.
The parting of the Red Sea must be one of the most well-known and dramatic stories of the bible, not the kind of thing pumps and hydraulics can easily replicate. It still feels like a monumental miracle today, despite the fact that we have convincing virtual reality, artificial intelligence that can write convincingly, and telescopic images of distant galaxies millions of years in the past. The danger of our age is in the perception that the miraculous emerges from us in thousands of showy ways.
To return to an age of miracles we need merely feel the beating hearts in our chests, watch the early summer growth of garden plants, witness the people who selflessly serve others. There are miracles all around us, in the extraordinary and the mundane. We simply need to open our eyes to the God who makes them all possible.
Questions for Reflection:
- What do you consider miraculous? Have you experienced the miraculous, or do you feel like miracles are things of the biblical past?
- Do you think of biblical moments like the parting of the Red Sea more as factual accounts or as stories intended to represent spiritual truths? What do those perspectives have in common?
Prayer:
Lord, help us to see the miraculous all around us, in creation, in others, and in ourselves. Amen.
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