Exodus 14:5-18 / Matthew 12:36-42
There is a story of a man who fell off a cliff in the dark but he managed to catch on to a branch and was left dangling there.
So he cried out "O God, help me! Help me!". And then a voice came from heaven "Do you really want me to help you?"
And the man said, "Yes, Lord, yes!" And the voice from heaven said, "Then you must do what I tell you. Now let go off the branch!"
And the man thought for a while and then he said in a softer voice, "Is there anybody else up there?"
Whenever we are faced with desperate situations and God is giving us difficult solutions, we tend to look for other options. In those kind of situations, we don't trust God enough to believe that the difficult solution is the solution.
Such was the situation of the Israelites in the 1st reading. Faced with the sea before them and the Egyptians coming up behind them, they were terrified and they cried out to the Lord.
They were so desperate that they spoke against Moses and they even said this "Better to work for the Egyptians than die in the wilderness!" For them the only other option was to go back to slavery.
Because they were told to march on into the sea, which was as good as death by drowning.
The parting of the sea and the Israelites crossing dry-footed and the subsequent drowning of the Egyptian army was the greatest act of salvation that God worked for the Israelites. But we have to admit that it was difficult to trust in the Lord God especially when the situation is desperate and our minds do not accept the Lord's ways.
Anyway the earlier story did not end there. The next morning the rescuers came across a strange sight. The man was frozen to death with his arms still hanging on the branch and his feet was only six inches from the ground!
In desperate situations we need to let go of ourselves because we will fall none other than into the arms of God our Saviour.