Living in a desert nation...
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Living in a desert nation, it would have been no news to Moses that you could get water from striking a rock. Porous rocks like limestone can trap small amounts of water locked in by mineral deposits. Striking a rock can break away these deposits that stop up the water and cause water to stream forth. The miracle is that it was a sufficient flow of water for a party we're told numbers over a million! God's sign to the Israelites was something like Jesus' sign to Simon Peter when he had Peter cast out his nets and bring in a catch so large the nets began to break. It wasn't impossible that there were fish precisely there, though Peter had been fishing all night and it was unlikely, but God alone can provide in such abundance. Sometimes God asks his people to do ordinary things to produce extraordinary results.
