The Red Sea Crossing

Here is an excerpt from Streams in the Desert that we found encouraging. We hope that it encourages you as well! 

It is not the great achievement of the Red Sea crossing by Moses and the Israelites that is so stupendous and miraculous. The awesomeness of the Wilderness Journey is the fact that approximately three million people were sustained for forty years in a small, dry, fruitless desert. Have you thought of what it must have been like to merely exist from day to day with every human means for survival out of reach?? Let us look at a few facts to see how impossible it would have been for Moses and his people to rely upon their own means of subsistence: "To get through the Red Sea in one night they had to have a space at least three miles wide, so they could walk 5000 abreast. If they walked double file it would have been 800 miles long and would have  taken them 35 days and nights to get through. At the end of each day of the journey they would have needed space 2/3 the size of the state of Rhode Island for them to camp. This would have been a total of 750 square miles. The ammount of food for consumption alone is absolutely astounding when you consider the fact that they were traveling in a country in which there was no natural abundance of food to be found. Just the amount needed to keep from starving would have added up to 1,500 tons a day. But to feed them the way that we would eat it would take at least 4,000 tons. Just to haul it would take two freight trains each a mile long. At today's prices it would cost $4 million a day. Then consider the amount of water required for the barest necessities of drinking and washing dishes each day. It has been calculated that they would need 11 million gallons each day. Think of the gigantic task of hauling water. It woulde have taken a freight train with tank cars 1,800 miles long.

Now Moses many or may not have had to do the figuring for managing the survival of his people, but God surely knew the cost! It may be more easily understood why Moses hesitated to be the great emancipator of God's enslaved people if he had any inkling as to what an immense chore that there was before him. We do know for a surety that he knew the land, its seasons and size. But God was the Provider, not Moses.

From Streams in the Desert for August 4th