“Motion is Lotion; Rest is Rust”
April 19, 2021
When I complained to my physical therapist about knee joint pain, he said, “Keep moving. Motion is your lotion and if you only rest you will rust!” That may be but it is far less painful to rest. When my 95 year old parents’ primary care physician’s appointment came to an end the other day, their doctor said, “My final advice for you today is to keep moving!” That may be, but it is much easier to rest.
At some point, all of us become stuck, or stiff, and fearful of moving either physically or emotionally. It is far less painful, less difficult, and less frightening to remain physically stiff or emotionally stuck than it is to move at all in any direction – on or forward! The fear of pain and the fear of uncertainty, keeps us emotionally and physically stuck. In these cases, we tend to settle for the easy or the known pain rather than risk the difficult and unknown pain. When my therapist gives me painful exercises to relieve my knee pain, I become fearful because I cannot imagine how I could possibly perform them. I know the pain I feel when I am motionless, but I cannot fathom how intense the pain will be when I begin to move.
Yet, it is said that it is easier to steer a boat that is moving than one that is stationary. If I can trust that, then it is time for my parents and me to get moving, even if difficult, painful, or downright scary!
When I invested four hours watching Cecil B. DeMille’s, “The Ten Commandments” over Easter weekend, and saw the fantastic cinematography of the parting of the Red Sea (which, by the way, was created using large dunk tanks flooded with Jell-O), I realized God gave advice, similar to my parents’ doctor and my PT.
A little background is helpful here. At this point in the movie, and in Israel’s history, the Israelites had only been out of Egypt and free from Pharaoh for about a week when Pharaoh decides to force Israel back to Egypt. As Pharaoh pursued Israel and drew near, the Israelites looked up and were afraid. Of course they were! Pharaoh’s armies were on one side and the Red Sea on the other. Israel saw no way of escaping and they said to Moses, “For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than that we should die in the wilderness“(Exodus 14: 12). Israel was not quite a week out of Egypt and they already distorted the past, thinking that it was better for them in Egypt than it really was.
Moses responds to the people with great courage. In Exodus 14, we read:
13 Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
Moses said, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm, the LORD will fight for you…be still.” All of this must have sounded comforting and inspiring. However, I would imagine that Moses had no idea what God would do for them-just that He would do something and when all was said and done, the Israelites would never see the Egyptians ever again.
Moses says in essence, DON’T MOVE, and then God says, MOVE ON.
15 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on. (Exodus 14: 15)
As the Israelites moved, moved on, and moved forward, God parted the Red Sea for their safe passage on dry ground and then the waters returned and covered all the army of Pharaoh that came into the sea.
The LORD is urging us, through this account, to trust Him with whatever He sets before us today. If we will MOVE and just take the first step of obedience, He will show us the next steps and be with us.
I think I will take my evening walk now. Motion is Lotion; Rest is Rust!