Have you ever been anxious over a circumstance that you can’t control that will potentially harm you or your family? If your answer is no, I would like to meet you and also test your blood to make sure you’re human. This is something we have all experienced in different seasons!
Perhaps you are anxious over not being able to stay home with your young children because you have to work outside of the home. Perhaps you live in a “bad” school district and you are worried about your children’s education or safety. Perhaps your children don’t have a mother or father figure in their lives. Perhaps your adult child has gone “off the rails” and won’t heed any of your guidance. Perhaps your grandchildren are suffering in a situation over which you have no control. Perhaps you lost your job and you are concerned about providing for your family.
I have found myself in and out of this type of season lately and many of my friends and acquaintances seem to be as well.
Let’s together be encouraged by the story of Moses’ birth from the book of Exodus (chapters 1-2:10).
Moses is born during the reign of a “new king” or pharaoh in Egypt. God’s people (the Israelites) had been in Egypt for a while, ever since all the sons of Jacob had settled there to escape a famine, due to their gracious brother Joseph. But this new pharaoh didn’t remember Joseph… and he just didn’t like the Israelites. So he decides to exercise population control and tells the Israelite midwives (and eventually all the Egyptians) to kill any newborn Israelite boy that was born. You’ll do a fist-pump when you hear what the Bible says about these superhero midwives – “But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.”
So within this terrible, really scary environment, an Israelite woman, Jochebed, gives birth to a baby boy – Moses. And under the midwives’ cover, she is able to hide him away. However, after about three months, he starts to make a lot of noise (as babies do) and she can feel the impending doom and fear as she realizes that any day now, someone will discover him and take him away to be murdered. If you have children, I don’t have to prompt you to think about how you would feel in this situation. Just reading it makes me panic. Can you relate to the fear and anxiety of pain and suffering in the face of uncontrollable circumstances?
Since her baby boy would surely be discovered soon, Jochebed “took for him a basket made of bulrushes and…bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.” While we don’t know exactly why she did this, it’s clear that her thought was this:
Anything I try will be better than his fate if he is discovered with me. I have no good options available to me, and he may still die, but I’m going to do whatever I can and trust you, God. Please, please help me and save my baby. As you kept Noah and his family safe in your ark, please will you keep my baby safe in this floating basket.
Well, God had a plan. He heard Jochebed’s cries and indeed, ALL the cries of his daughters in Egypt. He would not only keep Moses alive, but he would cause Moses to be plucked from the river by the Pharoah’s very own daughter to be raised as a prince of Egypt. And though his life wouldn’t be easy, God would draw Moses very near to him in deep relationship and use him to rescue his people from slavery.
Whatever intimidating or scary circumstances are looming over you, let your heart and spirit be encouraged – while you can’t control the evil or difficulty surrounding you, you can entrust your family’s future to a God who is completely sovereign. Not only is he in total control, he is a good king, more powerful and loving than any earthly king or pharaoh. He promises that “no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly”, so if it’s happening, it is somehow for your highest good and his glory (Psalm 84:11). You can also take heart that the worst circumstances might be exactly the “good” that God uses in your family to bring about huge blessing, deep relationship with him and the rescue of others in his great plan.
So what should we “do”? Go forth, do what we can to humanly solve the situation, but then put our baskets in the river, and put our hope and faith in God.
As Psalm 37:3 directs, in the face of evil or suffering, “trust in the Lord and do good.”
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