Hope in a Basket

by Teresa Kindred

    What if the leader of your country suddenly declared that all male babies were to be killed?

    Would you try to run away?

    Would you go into hiding?

    Would you accept it as God's will and stand idle while your crying infant was taken from your arms?

    Your actions might depend on your options. If you were poor you wouldn't have many choices. If your people were enslaved, you would have even fewer.

    These are the dismal circumstances of the mother of Moses during the slaughter of Hebrew babies. What we know about her largely comes from the actions she took when she was faced with this crisis. She probably was terribly frightened, feeling very helpless to save her precious child. But rather than take no action, she did the only thing she knew to do, and left the result up to God.

"But when she could hide him no longer, she got him a wicker basket and covered it over with tar and pitch. Then she put the child into it and set {it} among the reeds by the bank of the Nile... His sister stood at a distance to find out what would happen to him." (Exodus 2:3-4 NAS)

    How this mother's heart must have ached when she placed her son in the reeds and left him! Don't you know she cried and thought that she might never see her precious son again. But what could she do? She had to let him go and pray for God to watch over him.

    Most of us today don't have to worry about the leader of our nation ordering our children to be killed. On the other hand, we do have our share of concerns to cloud our hearts. We have to contend with the possibilities of nuclear war, child molestation, kidnapping, homicide...

    What are our options?

    Our options seem pretty much the same as Moses's mother, so where do we find our river, reeds, and basket?

    We can care for our children, love them, and pray for them. Ultimately, however, we know that we cannot control what will happen to them. Sooner or later we must take a deep breath, say a prayer, place them in a basket, and send them out into the world.

    The good news is we don't have to send them alone. If children learn to love God and His Word, He will be with them for the rest of their lives. That's the other part of Mose and his mother's story that we mustn't forget.

    So let's give our children the gift of real security; let's teach them about God and the power of his love. There is no better life preserver than God on the stormy seas of life and no better guarantee of the life to come.

Posted: 05/03/2001
URL: http://www.heartlight.org/articles/200105/20010503_mother.html

(c) 2001 Teresa Kindred, <kindred@mail.scrtc.com> - <http://www.teresakindred.com>. Used by permission.

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