The Song on the Far Shore

The sea stood up.

Did you know water could do that? Stand up tall on the left, tall on the right, and hold still while a whole frightened people walked through on dry sand, down the middle, all the way across.

And when their feet touched the far shore, safe, every last one of them safe, something rose up inside them that simply had to come out.

So they sang.

Miriam lifted a tambourine in her hand,
and the women came after her,
dancing,
and the whole great crowd sang it together:

Sing to the Lord!
He is strong, and he is kind.
He saw us trapped, and he came running.
He made a road where there was no road.
He is our God. And we are his.

Only a little while before, they had been so afraid. The deep water waited in front of them, the chariots thundered behind, and there was nowhere left to run. They thought it was the end of everything. Instead, that trapped place became the very spot where God opened the sea.

And now look at them. On the safe shore, breathing hard, laughing, crying a little, tambourines shaking in the morning light. The running was over. The fear was over. They were dancing on the other side.

Maybe you have wanted that too, wanted it so much it ached: to finally be safe, to be all the way across, to set down the running and the fear and just be glad, glad clear through, with nothing left chasing you.

These people had wanted it their whole lives long. And here it was, under their dancing feet.

Their song knew something even they didn't quite know yet. Tucked near the end of it, they sang about a place they had never seen: a mountain, a home, where God himself would plant them and they would stay forever. They sang it like it had already started coming toward them.

Because it had.

This shore was wonderful, but it was not the end of the journey. It was one bright morning of a far greater Day, still up ahead.

There is a bigger rescue coming. A deeper deep, a darker sea, and Jesus walks his whole family straight through it, through the fear, through everything that chases us, all the way to the far shore of the world made new.

And there is singing there too.

A whole family gathered home, not one of them missing, standing safe on a shore that never washes away. Next to that song, the song by the Red Sea is only the first soft note, the morning before the morning.

So when you are afraid, water in front and trouble behind, you can remember the dancing women and their tambourines. God made a road for them. He is making one for you.

And the song on the far shore?

He has already begun to teach it to you. One day you will stand all the way home with him, singing, never once afraid again, and everyone he loves will be singing right beside you.