Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, "What shall we drink?" And he cried to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. There the LORD made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, saying, "If you will diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer." Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.
Exodus 15:22-27
The Lord showed Moses a tree, we are told, which when cast into the waters, made them sweet. By this we are meant to understand that there is a power in God that can make the bitterest trial on earth a sweet and gracious blessing to the soul. This can, and needs to be applied in the widest possible sense. Every dispensation of a mysterious Providence can be included. Sometimes we meet with trials of various kinds, sorrow, bereavement, temptation, a difficult and painful decision, or the challenge of a continuing and protracted discipline, the burden of worry and perplexity, or a task that seems beyond our strength - all these can prove to be our Marahs, and often the stream is bitter and we cannot drink of it. But there is a tree that can make Marah's streams flow sweet to the taste. The Cross, as an old Puritan saint once said, is made of sweet wood, and those who take it up find that it transforms experience from bitterness into sweetness. But what does it mean for us, to take the healing tree into our Marahs? It means accepting the challenge of the hard way in the spirit of submission and acceptance, as our great Exemplar did, when He took the bitter cup in the Garden of Gethsemane and drank it to the dregs, for our sakes. To relate thus our dark experiences to the Cross, is to take into them its healing. It is not something that can well be described, but rather known only as we pass through it; but it cannot mean less than this: in the midst of the excruciating pain and the desolating sense of aloneness in that Marah experience, there sweeps over the soul also a fierce tenderness and sweetness and solace, and an unfathomable sense of aching joy and peace and even fulfilment that passes all comprehension, as if a wonderfully soothing oil were being poured gently on a raw flesh-wound. This is the force of 26, 'I am the Lord that healeth thee'. A cross taken up at the behest of the Saviour not only does not harm us, though we naturally shrink from it, but rather brings healing and wholeness to the entire being as nothing else can. The Lord of the Cross is the great Healer, and that is why those who bear in their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ are men and women who have added conscious vigour and vitality, and spiritual power and maturity to their experience.