Mud, a simple mixture of earth and water, plays an enormous role in helping the Jewish people to freedom from Egypt and in the accompanying story of Devorah’s war that follows this week’s Torah reading as a haftarah. We may feel at times that life’s muddy waters hold us back. Instead of helping to make us free, and despite our best efforts, we get stuck and cannot move forward in our lives. The mud, therefore, is both a natural agent that God uses to defeat our enemies, helping us to be free, and a symbolic power that challenges our ability to live and thrive. We will see that overcoming the inertia that challenges us is a difficult task that requires both an inward and outward focus.

In this week’s parasha, we read about the Egyptians who are pursuing the Israelites into the Sea of Reeds. God turns to the Egyptian army, and then we read the following verse, "God locked the wheels of their chariots so that they moved forward with difficulty."(Ex. 14:25) God uses the muddy sea floor as a tool, and the wheels sink as God turns the waters back toward the soldiers. In the battle that Barak leads at Devorah’s behest, we see that the overflowing wadi Kishon checks the charge of Sisera’s iron chariots with an onslaught of mud and water, "The torrent Kishon swept them away…."(Ju. 5:21) We observe the power of the mire to overcome the enemy as Sisera leaps from his chariot on foot with Barak and his soldiers charging down Mount Tabor. The earth and water become tools that God combines to challenge our enemies. We usually seek to avoid the mud, but here we find that earth and water are the simple and decisive elements of victory.

After a rainstorm, we know that our shoes will sink in our lawns and fields, but in our lives we often cannot predict the forces that will hold us down and prevent us from moving forward and fulfilling our potential. When we are stuck, we can both turn inward and outward. The inward turn involves an assessment of our sense of self and our faith. Perhaps the reason we feel stuck or indecisive about our future and ourselves is that we have lost our sense of who we are and our connection to God and Torah. Even the Israelites were caught in a panic when they saw the advancing Egyptian army. They said they would be happy to go back to Egypt, and we can interpret this on a psychological level as a desire to go back to "the way things were." Moses re-establishes their faith as he promises that God will save all of them and negate the power of their enemies. If we find that we are floundering in our lives, we can focus on what is most important in our lives, and we can assess the priorities and values that orient us in the world. The Torah is a "tree of life to those who grasp it," and so we can find our grounding also by reconnecting to regular learning and growth through the Torah.

We must also turn outward to our friends and loved ones to find those people who can help us out of the places where we are stuck in life’s muddy waters. At the most difficult times in our lives, we often find that those who truly care for us will be there when we need them. It is up to us to thank them for their support and to be open to their help. The Talmud teaches us: "An imprisoned person cannot free himself/herself."(Berachot 5b) It is important for us to keep our eyes open and respond when others are struggling. It is essential that we work to create communities in which people feel that they can find a caring presence both when their lives are easy and when life becomes difficult. A reality is that we may not even notice that we are sinking deeper into the metaphorical mire. We may need the kehillah, the community, that surrounds us to make us aware of what is happening before we can engage in the introspection and spiritual work that each of us requires.

God creates situations in this week’s Torah and haftarah readings in which earth and water mix together to bring freedom to the Israelites. In life, this muddy mixture is a way of describing how we can get bogged down in the challenges, the pain, and the emotional wear and tear of life. As we reconnect to who we are and to our faith, and as we band together with those people in our lives that can help us, we can recreate the miracles at the Sea of Reeds and at the wadi Kishon. We can find our footing and walk on the dry land of possibility and promise. We can overcome the fear and uncertainty that can lead to panic and sinking deeper into the ground. With God’s help, we will all celebrate moving forward in life as Miriam led dancing and praises to God when we were safely on the sea’s opposite shores.