Today’s scripture: Exodus 2:1-10 (ESV-text and audio) (KJV) (The Message) What might God be saying to me?
My thoughts (Tommy Chittenden):
Threatened by the population growth of the Hebrew people in Egypt, the Pharaoh ordered all male Hebrew babies be thrown into the Nile. Jochebed (named in Exodus 6:20) gives birth to Moses and hides him as long as she can. In order to save his life, she concocts a plan.
She fashions a basket and floats the baby down the dangerous Nile River where the daughter of Pharaoh is bathing, in hopes that she will adopt him as her own. Not only does she do just that, but at the suggestion of Moses’ sister (Miriam), the princess hires Moses’ mother as a nursemaid for the baby! Not only is Moses safe but his mother is getting paid to care for him. The writer wants to assure us that God’s hand is at work in this baby’s life. And indeed God is!
Those are the facts of the story. But allow your mind to give way to your heart for a moment, and feel what Jochebed might have been going through as she pushed that basket out of her grasp into the current of the Nile, trusting that her baby might be saved by God’s guiding hand. Was this an act of desperation or supreme faith? Or both? What other choice did she have? Sometimes good people are left only with what seem to be bad options.
Maybe you don’t have to wonder — because you know what that moment was like:
- having to decide between adoption and abortion?
- between marriage and divorce?
- intervening in a loved one’s addiction?
- having to decide with the doctors and family if it is time to end life support for Mom or Dad or spouse or partner?
Life brings just about everyone such moments, when the solutions are anything but simple and clean. Yet this Hebrew text would suggest that we can find God right there in the middle of such moments, when we are honest about our doubts and have the courage of our faith.
I think there’s one more lesson to learn from this passage. I want to encourage each of us to do as Pharaoh’s daughter did, and symbolically “draw others from the water.” The un-mothered, the un-fathered, the hurting, the grieving, the one who is homeless, hungry, a widow, sick — they are in our family, at our doorstep, and in our community. They too are children of God. They are our brothers and sisters. Each time we gather for corporate worship or a small group, look, really look at the person sitting next to you or in front or back of you. In their eyes you will recognize them.
“In as much as you have done this (loved, shown compassion) for one of these, you have done it to Me.” (Jesus, Matthew 25)
Thought for the day: God, when the options are few and the choices filled with doubts, may loving people be there for us to lean on. May we each come to know that at such moments You are with us and we are never alone.
We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the guidelines on the How to Pray page.