Thousands of years ago, the Jewish people were enslaved in Egypt. They had originally been welcomed a generation earlier as guests, when the leaders in Egypt were grateful that the Jewish man Joseph had predicted a famine, then carefully managed grain rationing to save both the Egyptian and Jewish people from starvation. When all those leaders died, that history was forgotten, because they feared the growing numbers, the Egyptians forced the Jewish people to labor for them. Fear also led the king to declare all baby boys born to Jewish mothers were to be thrown into the Nile River and drown..
One Jewish mother gave birth to a boy and kept him hidden for three months. When could not hide him any longer, the mother wove a basket, lined it with pitch so it would float, and hid it in the reeds at the river’s edge. The baby’s sister watched from a distance as the daughter of the king found the basket and baby. The king’s daughter took pity on the crying baby and raised him as her son.
This baby grew up to be Moses, a great leader of the Jewish people. Moses’ story fills dozens of chapters of the book of Exodus, where, with God’s intervention, he leads the people out of Egypt and to the boundary with their own land. This remarkable leader was saved from death as a vulnerable infant by the daughter of the very king who had placed the death sentence on Moses and the other Jewish babies. On the edge of the river where he could have been drowned, Moses was found floating in his basket and given another life.
Over and over again through Moses’ long story, God shows up in remarkable and unexpected places, working through unlikely people. Moses snatched from death by the daughter of the very king who decreed the slaughter is probably the most remarkable and unexpected of them all. God shows up, sometimes in the people we least expect, in absurd and unlikely places.
Exodus 2:1-10
Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. 2 The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. 3 When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. 4 His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him. 5 The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. 10 When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
- When have you experienced God’s love or compassion or mercy in an unlikely place or from a surprising person?
- Where have you been surprised to find God’s presence?
- Who has supported or cared for you in ways you didn’t expect from them?
.
God of love,
There are times you intervene and help me at the very edge of disaster,
like you saved Moses in the basket on the edge of the Nile.
You care for me through people who love me,
like Moses was cared for and tended by his mother and sister.
You also use unlikely people to help me, like Moses was saved by the king’s daughter.
Open my heart to the possibilities that lie ahead, to the surprises I will encounter,
and the ways you show up.
Amen