Between a Rock and a Hard Place

It’s a story for anyone who has ever been caught between danger and disaster, between a rock and a hard place. It's the ancient story of Exodus.

Beyond their wildest dreams a tribe of slaves found themselves free at last, heading east on the Desert Road towards their long-promised home.

Two days later, camped by Yam Suph, the Sea of Reeds, they saw the dust of Pharaoh’s army with 600 chariots bearing down on them. Yam Suph posed a formidable barrier - too wide to circumvent and too deep to cross; it blocked their only path of escape. If they were chosen people, they appeared chosen to die.

But Yahweh’s escape plan for Israel was ingenious and dramatic. That night, the story goes, a strong wind opened a path in the sea and Israel escaped on dry land. When the Egyptian cavalry followed, the waters returned and swallowed them up. They sank like stones. Israel was free.

It was their Bastille Day, their Fourth of July, their Day of Freedom! Jews have savored that moment forever. It is an iconic motif of their national story - a resurrection from the verge of extinction to ecstatic freedom - and they have experienced it time and again.

It also mirrors a universal reality. Death is the great enemy of every human being on the planet. Who can open up a way through this Forbidding Ocean of Oblivion?

Picture all of humanity on the shore of an uncrossable sea. The waters are frigid and dark and the tide is coming in. The wind blows and the waters part. Striding down the dry newly-opened path comes a solitary man. He has braved the waters ahead of us and forced the jaws of Death apart. He conquered death and opened up a way to Life, to God.

He summons us. “Come with me. I am Resurrection; I am Life. Follow me and live forever.” Jesus finds us between our rock and the hard place, and invites us to follow him into a new kind of life – a life of learning God’s way, experiencing the freedom of God’s reign.