Before we start, answer the following questions for yourself right now at this moment:

What are five things that you can see? 

What are four things that you can touch?

What are three things that you can hear?

What are two things that you can smell?

What’s one thing that you can taste?

 

Now how many of those things were things that you don’t normally think about? For me, the thing that I can taste is some toothpaste that got onto my lip and I didn’t wipe off. Pick one of the things that you don’t normally think about and dissect it. My toothpaste is minty, a little sticky, and a little spicy (if you find it weird that my taste buds thinking toothpaste is spicy, welcome to the club. Brian Brogan is the president and you can text him if you want to discuss my tastebuds. Ok back to the devo). My toothpaste has always been minty but I normally don’t give it much thought. What’s something that has fallen into the background of your life? Maybe it’s a knick in the wall or a stain on your carpet. Maybe it’s a key on your family piano that gets stuck or the order that you get ready in the morning. The point is, after a while, we fall into a routine and we dismiss things that we see every day. I brush my teeth every day so the taste of my toothpaste isn’t really shocking to me. 

 

When the Israelites were released from being slaves to Pharoah’s people, they walked through the desert to get to the Red Sea. Exodus 13: 21 says that in this time “Lord went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.” God was physically there in front of the Israelites 24/7, day and night, day in and day out. Fun fact of the day, God physically appearing is called theophany. Now you learned a new word for the day!

 

Now you might be wondering what the point of the exercise above was and here it is. In the same way that we can sometimes get used to and push to the background things that normally happen, I think that the Israelites got used to the cloud in front of them and the fire before them. They knew that their toothpaste was minty, but they didn’t focus on it because it was old news that happened every day. 

 

As the Israelites continue, they reach the Red Sea and when they turn around, Pharoah and his men are closing in behind them. Pharoah has changed his mind and wants the Israelites back. The Israelites are trapped between two mountain ranges with a sea of one side and Pharoah’s army on the other. They begin to say that it would have been better for them to stay slaves to Pharoah’s people, the Egyptians. The Egyptians fed the Israelites and gave them steady work. Most of all, the Israelites never had to worry about things as big as escaping an army. 

 

Then Moses says this:

 

“The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

 

The Israelites were standing right next to the fire that was God, and yet they didn’t think that they would make it out of that situation. The fire had fallen into the background of everyday life and they couldn’t see the promise that was right in front of them. Their toothpaste’s mintiness had been forgotten.

 

Now you might be thinking that the Israelites were pretty dumb. After all, God was standing right there where they could see Him.

 

However, while we might not have a burning flame of God physically in front of us, we have the Bible and we have the Holy Spirit: two things that the Israelites did not have. As the Israelites let the pillars of cloud and fire fade into the background, we have a tendency to let the Bible and the Holy Spirit fade into the background of our lives. We know that they’re there just as we know that our toothpaste is minty, but we dismiss them as part of our everyday life. 

 

Going back to what Moses said, God will come in and fight for us. Something that I find really encouraging is that God has fought many battles in the spiritual realm that we don't and never will know about. That’s just who He is. God will come and fight for us, all we need to do is be still and let Him part the sea. Then we must do our part and actually cross the sea, but that’s a conversation for another time. Sometimes we lose sight of God being able to help fight our battles and we think that we need to fight them all ourselves. But sometimes, all we really need to do is just be still and focus on how minty our toothpaste is… metaphorically of course.