Remember the old Ten Commandments movie that featured Charlton Heston as Moses? If so, you’ll recall the scene where the Israelites, in flight from slavery, crossed the Red Sea after God parted the waters for them. That movie was made in 1956, but the special effects were pretty good nonetheless. It was high-impact cinematography as the waters roiled up on both sides of a suddenly dry corridor through the sea. And, of course, you also remember what happened when the pursuing army of Egypt tried to follow the Israelites on the same path. God caused the waters to close over them.

            That’s also the story in our reading for today, but here’s something you may not have considered: When the people of Israel saw the bodies of the enemy and the wreckage of their chariots washing up on shore, what did they learn from the experience?

            Consider that at that moment, they were looking at the absolute end of a situation that had been part of their lives as a people for something like 400 years. Every one of those Israelites standing on the shore that day had been born in slavery. They knew no other way of life. Yet, now, all at once, that was forever behind them.

            So what did they learn? Or more to the point, what do we learn we suddenly come to the end of seemingly interminable situations?

Situations do end

            Imagine, for example, that you are working at a job you don’t enjoy but which you don’t feel you can leave because the wages are good and your family needs the health insurance. And so you go to work faithfully, but just waiting for 5 p.m. to roll around so you can go home. But then, all at once, the company downsizes and you are let go. At first you panic, but then it dawns on you that you are suddenly free. True, you will need to find new employment, but the hold your old job had on you has been broken. You will never again need to consider the demands of that particular work. But what have you learned from your newfound freedom?

            Or imagine what it might feel like if you’ve suffered from a chronic illness for much of your life, but then a new medicine cures you. All at once, you are free from the limitations of that illness. What have you learned from

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