Letting Go

 "By faith Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict." Hebrews 11:23

"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." Exodus 2:3

    On the days when my daughter, Lauren, has to drop her nine-month-old baby off at the day care, it breaks her heart to hear little Esme crying upon their separation. I understand just how she feels; I still cry every time I have to say goodbye to Lauren at the airport, and she's thirty-seven!

    Imagine being Jochebed, the mother of the infant Moses, when the governing Pharaoh of the land declared "every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile." (Exodus 1:22) It was a time of grave sorrow for all the families of that time. But Jochebed defied the decree, stepped out in sheer faith and set her son adrift in a tiny ark, probably crying her eyes out and praying with all her heart as he floated away. To save him, she had to let him go; had she clung to him, she would have lost him.

    Jochebed didn't have any way of knowing what would happen to Moses. There was no page to turn in a Bible to learn the outcome. Maybe she wondered how it could possibly be in God's divine plan for her to give up her son. As it turns out, the Pharaoh's daughter drew him from the water and raised Moses as a prince of Egypt, a background that would serve him well in his future role. 

    After forty years of palace living, Moses fled to Midian, where he became a shepherd. Another forty years passed until he talked to God's burning bush and reluctantly accepted the role of the great deliverer. Assuming Jochebed was still alive, she would have seen her son become her savior, performing great miracles until he led the Israelites from bondage to the promised land. 

    Perhaps you have a family situation in which, the tighter you grasp what is "yours," the more hopeless things become. Like Jochebed, in great faith, we are called to trust God with our children - whether it's leaving them at daycare, an airport or setting them free in your heart as you "lean not on your own understanding." Let go and let God.

"Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it." Matthew 10:39