By faith he kept the Passover and the application of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel. By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned.
Hebrews 11:28-29 (NIV)
Blood, Water, and Nerve
Saturday mornings a woman gets to the shelter at eight and walks the dogs that have been there longest. She takes four at a time, down the gravel to the end of the fence line and back, and she’s got them figured out, which ones pull and which ones stop at every post. The gravel is still wet from overnight, and the fence line runs out to a gate at the far end that’s chained shut. None of the four is any closer to going home than it was last Saturday.
Moses kept the Passover and the application of blood, on faith, and the destroyer didn’t touch the firstborn of Israel. The people went through the Red Sea as on dry land, and the Egyptians who tried the same crossing drowned.
Of those two, I’d have balked at the blood. Walking into a sea at least looks like getting somewhere.
Each of them took hands and feet, on the day itself, with the danger standing right in front of them. I imagine the first foot went down on the seabed before anybody knew how long that ground would hold, and then a second one, and then the whole people walking.
God had said what he was going to do, and these people moved on the strength of it. They had a word from him and they had a thing to do with their own bodies before the day was out, and they did it. Hebrews calls both of them faith.
She turns the four of them at the end of the fence line, and they come back faster than they went out, all four pulling toward the building and the same runs they were so glad to leave. She walks them in one by one. Then she goes back out for the shepherd in the last run, the one nobody takes, and walks him by himself.
A Prayer to Remember
Show me the one thing today that has to be done today, God. I keep waiting for a week with more room in it. Give me the nerve to start it while I’m still afraid of it, and not a month from now, when somebody braver has already gone first.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
