It started with one verse. A heavy, life-altering verse that I read today while sipping my morning brew, not pausing to feel the weight of the words and how desperately heavy they felt to the families, the women who would be forced to live to play such a heartbreaking role in history.
Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people:
Exodus 1:22
“Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile…”
And with that order, baby boys up to about two years of age were wiped out. This order was carried out on somewhere between two and eight years. Thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands were killed … but to the mothers, did any number over their one matter?
Then the story continues into Exodus 2 (1-10), with the story of family of Moses, centering on his mother, Jochebed:
Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said. Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”
And within these ten verses we see the bravery of Jochebed. For she chose to defy the law … not THE LAW, the one that the Hebrew people followed as an effort to obey their God, but the law of Egypt, the law served by Pharaoh, who, like the Hebrew God, could take life away.
The thing is, I bet she is not the only mum of a Hebrew boy who chose to hide her baby. Were I there, I would. I would do whatever I could to save my child from harm, to protect him (or her) from the evil of this world. I too would hide my child, even at the risk of my own life. Wouldn’t you?
But then, we come to verse 3,
But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
Her baby boy, Moses, was too big, too old to hide. She could not hand him over to authorities, she could not watch them kill her son. So, she did what any mother of faith, who is desperate that her child live … she left her son in the hands of the only one who could save him, the only one she trusted with the future of her son … her God.
And, as I considered Jochebed and how she responded to this desperate situation, this situation that so few of us, as mothers, ever encounter. I read and wondered how Jochebed’s story applies to my life, today and I realized her story applies to what all mothers encounter as our children grow up to reach an age where we are no longer able to hide them from this world, from the evil that lurks around the corner, from growing up as independent adults.
She put the basket, containing her child, into the waters … trusting in the only one who can save them.
I think that Ashlei Woods puts it so well,
“There comes a time – many times, actually – in the lives of our children where we have to put the basket in the water. We have to let go and trust the plan of the Father. The world is a scary place – a place where we fear our children could drown. But we must remember that we have to let go so that God can draw them from the waters for His great purpose. He has called us to be their parents, but they were His first.”
itsawonderfilledlife 