Don't Forget To Rejoice

“He turned the sea into dry [land]: they went through the flood on foot: there did we rejoice in him.” (Ps 66:6 AV)

Can you imagine trying to rejoice when there are walls of water on both sides of you?  Can you imagine trying to rejoice when the entire Egyptian army is behind you and if the pillar of fire were to fade, you would be trapped?  Can you imagine rejoicing when you are trying to get your family and all your belongings across a sea that is abating?  Rejoicing?  Are you nuts?  I think I would run as fast as I could, and when the sea closed upon the Egyptians, then I would rejoice.  Yet our psalmist tells us they rejoiced in the middle of the sea.  To have that state of mind while escaping certain death takes a lot of patience and faith.  Faith, which they would later forget that they had.

When God does a great thing, it is often overwhelming.  Rejoicing, although completely appropriate, is not our natural reaction.  After the shock of what God did has worn off, then rejoicing usually follows.  One of the hardest days of my life was the day of my wife’s cancer surgery.  Up to this point, I had learned to trust my intuition.  When I knew in my heart that something was about to happen, it usually did.  It is a sixth sense by knowing how God works and what He is trying to accomplish before He acts.  It has served me very well over the years.  This sense of God’s leading has put me in places of opportunity.  One such case was going to a hospital for a visit and knowing beforehand that I would bump into a specific someone whom I hadn’t seen in 15 years.  Sure enough, they walked into the hospital the moment I was at the desk inquiring of the patient whom I came to see.  The day of my wife’s surgery, I was prepared to hear the news that she didn’t make it out of the OR.  I was sitting with my son and had the overwhelming feeling that she had passed at noon on the dot.  I remember looking up into the sky and saying goodbye.  We sat there.  In silence.  Thirty minutes later we were called to the consult room where the surgeon was to meet us.  I was prepared to hear the worst.  After all, if all went well, they usually came right to the lobby area.  I was sitting in a private room.  As the surgeon described the surgery and what she accomplished, I was stunned.  My wife was alive.  She did well.  All my fears were abated.  Rejoicing was not my first response.  Shock was.

As to how to apply this, I am searching beyond the obvious.  The obvious application would be to rejoice as a discipline to the miraculous hand of God.  One can always meditate on it a bit later.  One has to imagine what this might have looked like.  Israel was rejoicing and celebrating while crossing the Red Sea.  Egypt had to have heard this and erroneously thought it was presumptuous to do so.  As the Jewish people sang songs of praise and glorified God with a shout, Egypt necessarily had to become more enraged.  Perhaps the joy expressed is what motivated the enemies of God to self-destruction.  Maybe the Devil has more influence over us because we have not motivated him to self-destruction.  Maybe the temporal enemies of the gospel have not collapsed because we as God’s people simple are too stoic in our response to what our great God has and will do!  Maybe rejoicing in the middle of God’s deliverance is the key to getting on the other side.  Maybe a heart of rejoicing is what gets us to higher ground, and not always the result of it!