Psalm 135:5-12. The Lord is great, above all gods. His will is done in all things in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the deeps. He makes the clouds rise and the lightnings flash. He smote the firstborn of the Egyptians and sent signs and wonders against Pharaoh to free his people. He smote many mighty kings to give their lands as an inheritance to his people.

I have written before about how the description of God controlling the weather and natural phenomenon seems to conflict with our modern understanding of science but in fact does anything but (See Nature is God's Creation and He Runs It on His Laws). So, leaving that topic, let's focus on the second part - how God sent signs and wonders to the Egyptians, even killing their firstborn, in order to set his people free. Often God's ways involve a lot of seemingly terrible things - like the plagues of Egypt and the death of so many children. This is so hard for us to understand - how can an all loving God not only allow these things to happen but take credit for causing them? Doesn't he love the Egyptians too? Of course he does. But, just like the Jews often had to suffer greatly (suffering that God allowed in order to bring them back to him), the Egyptians had to suffer terrible things in order to appreciate that God is God and he will free his people when he decides that the time is right.

God was not trying to convert the Egyptians (yet, at least - it was not their time in salvation history yet). The sufferings they endured were not meant to call them back to him, like the Jewish people's sufferings always are. Instead, God wanted them to let his people go. And when God wants something, he gets it. But the Jewish slaves were so integral to the Egyptian lifestyle, so necessary to keep the country going, the Pharaoh would not let them go until he lost something so precious to him, his son, that he could not bear the pain of keeping them any longer. It did not have to be this way. He could have relented during any one of the much lesser sufferings, but he was stiff-necked, stubborn, and clinging so desperately to the idea that the Jewish slaves were an absolute necessity for him to keep his kingdom together and running smoothly.

This is a lesson for all of us. We are all stiff-necked about something. There are certain attachments each of us have that we cling to as much as Pharaoh was clinging to the slaves. When the time is right for us to give those attachments up, God will begin sending us signs to do so. It is very wise to be in tune with him through prayer and worship so that we can recognize these signs as they come, and pay attention to and respond to them when they do. If we cling to our attachments as the signs get stronger, and the suffering harder to endure, they will only get worse. Better to give our attachments up at the first sign from God, and trust that he is doing his will and his will "is Love and Mercy itself," as St. Faustina told us in the closing prayer of the Divine Mercy Chaplet.