This week we find the Jewish people standing between a rock and a hard place. After escaping their enslavement in Egypt, the Jewish people are caught between their captors chasing them towards the sea and insurmountable mountains on either side of them. There is nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
They say there are no atheists in the foxhole. When there is no one to turn to, no human way out of a situation, even the most desperate turn to God. Standing trapped with nowhere to go, the Jews turn to their only hope…they turn to God. They do the unthinkable and throw themselves-quite literally-into the hands of God, hoping that He will bend the laws of nature and save them. As we know, He does. And as history has taught us, He always has.
We can live with this concept of blind faith as constantly as we choose. We trust our friends, our parents, our coworkers because we can see and talk to them…but we don’t know for a hard cold fact that they can or will do whatever it is that we need. We expect it of them because we have faith in our relationships. Imagine if we had that sort of faith in God. Imagine if we really, truly trusted in Him and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that He would always come through for us.
That is what it means to have emunah peshuta, to have simple faith. Simple in the bareness of its authenticity. Simple in that there are no strings attached. Say to yourself daily, I know and believe that Hashem will always be there, always carry me through the hurricane.
It’s the only way to weather the storm.