A little while ago, I asked a question about living on a prayer as opposed to taking action when needed. If you read through the Torah's account of the Jewish people at the Red Sea, it's clear that there's a time to jump in to the challenge. Sometimes, you've got to take the plunge rather than just praying for help.
Let's look at two incidents in the Torah portion of beshalach.
The children of Israel set on their journey from slavery to freedom, going through the desert rather than directly up the coastline towards the promised land.
Three days after they leave, Pharoah regrets his decision to let them go and makes chase with his entire cavalry. He catches up with them as they approach the coast of the Red Sea and the Jewish people are completely trapped. It's panic and chaos as some of the people begin praying fervently for God's help, while others just sink into despair, wishing they had never left Egypt in the first place.
Then, amazingly, God speaks harshly to Moses: Why are you praying? Now's not the time to pray at length when your people are right in the thick of trouble. Do something! Go forward into the sea...
And so they did, and God parted the sea for them and they walked across on dry land. But we need to stop and wonder - I mean, what were they supposed to do? They were closed in, they had relied on God so far so surely prayer for salvation was called for now? And yet, God Himself says: not now - now's the time to act, not pray.
So what made it most clearly a time to act rather than pray?
As if to make it more confusing, we find a very different approach being taken at the end of the reading. The Children of Israel, having crossed the sea and and seeing off the Egyptian army for the last time, are faced with a mortal enemy - Amalek.
With barbaric methods and the desire to completely wipe out the Jewish nation, they launched a surprise attack on the stragglers. Moses quickly took charge, appointed Joshua as the chief of staff and he took the troops out to war with Amalek. Moses himself climbed to a hilltop and held his hands up to Heaven in prayer. While his hands reached upwards, the Jews were successful and when he dropped them from weakness, their fortune turned bad. Aharon and Hur took hold of his hands and supported them in reaching upwards and Amalek was defeated by the end of the day.
Here, suddenly, we see prayer as the key to success! Before, when the people were up the creek, Moses was told off for praying. Now, it's the be all and end all of the war. What's going on?
I think the answer's in the sequence of events. This time round, before he went to pray, Moses instructed Joshua and oversaw the military preparations. Only once he had seen to it that everything in his power to do was done, could he then go and plead with God for salvation.
At the Red Sea, it seems that he was off the mark precisely because he was praying when the time called for action. That's hard to grasp because after all jumping into the sea doesn't seem to be the most rational thing to do, and yet it was still expected. They were still required to do everything possible to bring them to safety, rather than throw their hands up to Heaven.
Prayer, then, according to the Torah, is not an excuse for inaction. If people choose to use it as such, it seems that God isn't likely to be very interested either. I'm not trying to take away from it's power at all - no doubt, prayer is the paradigm of divine service - but it's not to be used instead of work and action.
Fulfilling your potential, serving your family and community requires you to do everything in your power to reach your goals. Then, your sincere prayer can do it's magic in the heavenly spheres and bring God's blessing to your work.
Make sense? What do you say? Please leave a comment to add or disagree!
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