Parting Water Can't Convince

Scripture:
Come and see what God has done,
    his awesome deeds for mankind!
He turned the sea into dry land,
    they passed through the waters on foot—
    come, let us rejoice in him.
Psalm 66:5-6

Observation: The parting of the Red Sea gets mentioned so often as evidence of God's salvation of Israel ... it must have been an awesome site! Generations - centuries - later, it is recounted. Under attack, God rolled back deep water, perhaps several stories high, and allowed almost one million people to pass through it.

Yet there is a paradox in this. On one hand, this great act gets mentioned so often, it is almost as if God did nothing else. It must be recounted hundreds of times as God's great act for Israel, to the point that it discounts a massive number of other acts, wonders, miracles, and blessings. On the other hand, despite the fact that this is a massive, remembered, observed, and otherwise unexplainable miracle of God, Israel rejects God over and over. They began that cycle even just days after the event itself, and continue it even as every other promise for them is fulfilled.

Application: Again I am reminded of the futility of 'debating' about God Jesus with others as a means to faith. One of the aspects of such debates is wondering why God doesn't just "prove" himself to the world. It is in the Red Sea we find the answer to that. God did just that - proved without doubt his supreme authority let alone is absolute existence - and while that proof is remembered and revered ... God is ignored, his precepts rejected, his prophets killed, his authority discounted, and his blessings taken for granted.

This is the way of humans, and part of the work of Satan on earth, that even definitive proof that itself is believed in and accepted as miraculous, cannot keep some from rejecting the love and even existence of the Lord. In the same way, nothing Jesus did could convince everyone of his lordship. Faith, then, can only come from a personal decision to believe, and no amount of evidence can ever accomplish what God's love can do ... change a heart.

Prayer: Lord, may I listen to you and serve you this day. I desire to show your love to others, and to make my life, not my words or logic, the evidence of you. This day and every day, I serve you. Amen.