Coming through the sea
was only the beginning.
The giddiness of walking
through walls of living water...

But the story doesn't end there.
Now it's desert, without a map.
What if the next forty years
are bone-dry and desolate?

Maybe it wasn't so bad, that life
numb and familiar. Cucumbers
and fish fresh from the Nile.
Certainty: a fixed path.

Now hope unfolds its mighty wings
and every step risks failure.
When I falter, remind me
I didn't cross the sea alone.

Remind me there's a mountain
I'm heading toward, a promise
of becoming together
that spans lifetimes.

Through walls of living water. Many depictions of the crossing of the Sea of Reeds imagine the sea as a kind of glassine wall on both sides, with sea life visible to the Israelites as they walked through. What if the next forty years[.] This foreshadows the fact that the children of Israel will wander in the wilderness for forty years, until the generation that knew slavery has died out. Cucumbers // and fish fresh from the Nile. Torah recounts the Israelites grousing to Moshe that they missed the foods they had known in Egypt. I didn't cross the sea alone. To me this is one of the powerful messages behind the daily recitation of "Mi Chamocha" -- the reminder that we all experience sea-crossings in our lives, and the knowledge that God is always with us. [T]here's a mountain / I'm heading toward[.] The culmination of the 49-day Omer journey is Shavuot, the festival when we receive Torah anew. The message of the Omer period is that Pesach finds its fulfillment in Shavuot, that liberation finds its fulfillment in covenant. [T]hat spans lifetimes. What we're heading toward is a brit olam, a covenant that is everlasting, through all time and space, from one lifetime to the next.