Counted With the Stars (Out From Egypt, #1)

by Connilyn Cossette

But as Shira’s voice rose and spun higher, I understood the beauty, the complicated dips and swells of the words swirling together to form a poetry beyond anything I had ever before experienced.

There was no need to understand the words. Every syllable rang with clear meaning. It was the song of her people, desperate for their God, crying out to him in their bondage: the plaintive cry from a broken heart, from a nation of broken hearts. The cry rose in one verse and fell in another, as the tide of hope grew and receded. Over two hundred years of bitter bondage had seen the rise and fall of the Hebrews’ hope, time and again.

Death. The lone voice remained solitary for only a moment, then others joined its lament, and then still more. Soon a cacophony of lamentation surrounded us on all sides, as though the entire land of Egypt grieved with one loud voice.

The former jewel and envy of the world, Egypt was no more. Barren now, she lay naked, stripped of her beauty, her children, her pride, and her power—the entire world witness to her violation and despair.

A lament met my ears, the cry of slaves to their god, begging for mercy, pleading to be heard and freed from their captivity. My heart had sung that song every day, but my gods were silent. Their hearts had sung that song, and their God had heard.

What frightening power this God, this Yahweh, possessed—the strength to part the sea. He was more powerful than Pharaoh, who stood helpless, trapped behind a pillar of light and cloud. More powerful than the sea and the winds. Each of the gods of Egypt had crumbled beneath his crushing might. A faceless, invisible god had defeated them all.

Yahweh could not be contained in an image, that his glory outweighed all the gold on the earth, that a mere piece of wood or stone carving could never capture the perfection and majesty of his being.

Yahweh had brought me here into the wilderness to free me, to show me how to leave my idols behind, and to meet the man I would spend my life with. Yahweh cared enough to bring me out of slavery and ignorance, protect me in the desert, and to reveal himself to me in a tent during the middle of a battle. The God who parted the sea could surely mend the rift in my heart.

Yahweh is the creator of all that there is. He is the most real thing, the only eternal thing. Our hearts will stop beating, our eyes will close, the mountains may someday crumble, the trees will wither away, but Yahweh will always be.”