It is joyful to feel that we do not and cannot have any enemies among men, but only unhappy brethren, who are deserving of pity and help, even when, through misunderstanding, they become our enemies and fight against us. Woe! They do not understand that the enemy is found within ourselves, and that first of all one must cast him our of oneself, and then also help others to do the same. We have only one enemy: the devil and his evil spirits. But man, no matter how far he has fallen, never loses certain sparks of light and goodness which may be blown into a bright flame. But for us there is no reason to fight against people, even when they consistently send against all kind of blows and rebukes … To fight against people is to take a false position of our enemies. Even if we succeed, we gain nothing from this fight, but rather become estranged from our own success.
~Martyr Roman Medved, Letter to His Daughter from the Gulag, 1932
When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people, and they said, “What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?” So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him, and took six hundred chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly. The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamped at the sea, by Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon. When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the LORD. They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
Oh beloved, it is true.
There are indeed battles to fight. And in the fights we may become quite battered and bruised. However, G_d has no desire that we lose a battle. Not even one. However again, the path to our victories is completely different than anything that we would expect.
And, if we miss the truth of how this works, we risk the bloodying of ourselves in banging our soulish heads against the walls of our circumstances. We can, because of the impulse of battle, sense that we are to engage our enemies with resistive force.
Oh yes, we are to resist. But, our resistance needs to look more like the stillness the ultra-fast Shaolin warriors learn to maintain on the inside. There, in waiting, and in the absolute absence of animosity comes a power for overcoming that we never expected before in our flesh-bound lives.
For, down in the spiritual bowels of the inner man is a strength to overcome that no force can resist. None.
Can we see it?
Read the passage. The enemy was not the Egyptians. The enemy of both the lives of the Hebrews and the Egyptians themselves was their fickleness and resulting hardness of heart. In their recalcitrance and hatred they brought the waters of a very deep red sea down on themselves.
If one reads the entire story (and all stories in the Word are both true and tell deeper truths) we see that the Egyptians were witness to an incredible miracle. The very waters of the sea were dammed up on both sides and the muck of the bottom had become a roadway.
But, instead of seeing the beauty and power of the One Who was saving His people, the Egyptians tore into the situation with a hard and heated rage – and it was their end.
However, have you ever considered what would have happened if the Hebrews responded in kind? Or, if they had rushed headlong into the waters to avoid the fearsome warriors trampling their direction? Of course, they would have died.
And so, hopefully the point is clear here. It is a lesson this fool of a writer is constantly having to re-learn. Often, even most often, standing still – alert and ready to move – without a bit of fear or anger or vengeance in our minds, is the surest path to victory.
Tonight is your night. Stillness is the way through.
Whoever does not fight the one who despises him, neither in word not in thought, has received true knowledge and demonstrates a firm trust in God.
~St. Mark the Ascetic, Homilies
