"Stand Your Ground": God Fights for You

In today’s first reading, Exodus 14: 5-18, God frees the Israelites from being slaves in Egypt.  When the Egyptians realize that they have freed the Israelites, they relented and pursued them with force.  The Israelites, seeing the Egyptian’s military advancing, cry out in despair to the Lord and complained to Moses, “Were there no burial places in Egypt that you had to bring us out here to die in the desert? Why did you do this to us?" Moses answers the people: “Fear not! Stand your ground, and you will see the victory the Lord will win for you today.”

You and I, too, will see the victory the Lord will win for us today. All we need to do is stand firm in our faith.  God is the rock of our salvation, the ground of our being. Whatever threats are approaching us, as in the case of the Israelites, “The Lord himself will fight for..[you and me]; …[you and I] have only to keep still.”

How difficult it is for me, and maybe for you,  “to keep still,” to trust in the Lord.  The “powers” or the weaknesses, the “spiritual cancers,”  the spiritual “dis-eases” that threaten my faith and trust in the Lord are as stubborn as were the Egyptians in pursuit of the Israelites. And like the Israelites, I sometimes would rather continue being their slave,  “feeding” and “watering” the “cancers,” the “dis-eases” within my being than to “stand…[my] ground,” trusting in the Lord.  God have mercy!