Take Me to the River Exodus 2:5 2/5/19

 “Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe in the river, while her women servants walked along beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds, and she sent one of her servants to bring it to her.”

Exodus 2:5 CEB

Here’s the situation: Israel is enslaved in Egypt.  They have grown so numerous in population that Egypt feels threatened and begins a genocide on all male children (so they can’t grow up and fight or make Israelite babies, and then girls will have to look elsewhere for children).  Moses’ mother, Jochebed, has her baby and obviously doesn’t want him to die, so she puts him in a watertight basket and floats him down the river.  Then comes the verse mentioned above. None other than Pharaoh’s daughter sees the baby and raises it as her own.  Moses, instead of being abandoned, instead of being slaughtered by the fearful Egyptians (fear makes people do terrible things), is raised in royalty.  Ironically, the very child that the royal family takes on becomes the leader that will defeat the Egyptians and lead the Israelites to freedom.

Jochebed (I was taught this is pronounced Joke-a-bed) is desperate.  Like any and all good mothers she doesn’t want her boy to die.  She floats him down the river.  I don’t know if she was trying to lure the princess in, or she just trusted God with her last hope that Moses would be okay, but we have no indication that she saw what was coming or knew who he would become.  Her desperation became the liberation of all her people.

In everyone’s lives, we find ourselves in desperate places.  We see no hope, no way out, no best-case scenario.  But our God is bigger than that.  He can take our desperation and turn it into liberation.  He can take our worst (whether it’s something we did or something that happened to us) and turn it into a joy that is so far beyond what we can ask, think, or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).  So if you are in that desperate place, cry out to God to show up in a way you never thought of.  God’s good at that.