May 10, 2020
Culture: The Importance of Family
Imagine you are raised a young woman, married a few years with two children. Your family is part of a group sojourning in a land with people hostile to you. In your family’s culture, women are to obey their fathers and later husbands. You and your husband love God. You honor His law. Then you hear at the well that the midwives are commanded by the king to destroy all male babies of your people as the baby is being born. But you hear how two of your midwife friends fear God over the king and so being, do not obey him. Yet you are scared for your people.
You find yourself encouraging and helping; but the fear is everywhere. Women are praying their children are girls so they are not required to kill them.
You find yourself pregnant. Part of your heart wrestles the fear – should you pray this child is a girl? Your husband smiles and whispers, “we fear God, the child is a gift.” But you hope that stays true even after the child is born. Your daughter and son see the fear in the people and look to you for comfort. They look for assurance that you live by the faith you speak of; do you fear for your baby or trust in God? You smile and tell them, “God has given us this child, God will keep the child safe.”
But you wonder. Death and affliction are around you. The rulers hate your people. Many of your friends have faced death and the shroud of death for defying the king expands to all in their household – or so the stories say. At least twice you have known it was truth. Would you risk the lives of your husband, son, and daughter for the baby if it is a boy? Which is safer? But the rumblings of the little person growing inside you remind you as you wrap your arms around your swelling belly that this child is worth the risk. God’s gifts are always worth the risk.
When the day comes and you labour with your own instead of calling the midwives, you birth the beautiful child whose lovely eyes catch away your breath as you stare and study him. Him. Yes, your daughter says “I have a baby brother!” and your husband hugs you and the newborn tight. Your son glances up at you to look in your eyes. You are not afraid. You will risk everything for this love. “We will keep him hidden.” Your husband smiles. Your son and daughter relax in their trust of you as they see you trust in God.
But you know there will come a time when your tiny illegal child will be too loud. Someone will know, someone will tell, and there must be a way.
You are learned as your family teaches even your daughters to read and think; you know that your afflictors bow before idols. One is the god of the river, Hapi, and you know that women wishing to be fertile yet cursed with barren wombs go and bathe at one place. Also, the wealthy do not nurse their own offspring, instead they hire a nurse for the child. You begin to watch. Daily you go with your daughter in tow under the guise of fetching water and food yet along the way you see the women who come to the water. They all wish for children; the longing in their hearts and souls are deep. Their sorrow causes tears to rise in your eyes. It also waters the plan you have devised.
Your husband does not agree quickly, for him it is a horrid idea to turn his child, his beautiful gift from God, over to some heathen woman regardless of whether it may save the child’s life. How can you think of killing our son’s soul in this way? But it is your daughter who says, “but Father, what if they chose Mother as his nurse?” and this you both continue to discuss and pray about.
The time comes when he is too big to hide anymore. His tender hunger cries have turned into the periodic wails of teething, striking without warning and so loud you fear his voice will call soldiers from every corner of the globe. Now, you set him adrift in the basket of woven reeds and pitch you have carefully crafted, and carefully place it among the reeds to drift into the part of the river where the barren women come to bathe. Your daughter stays as a guard. You leave to pray.
This is the sorrow, trust, and faith of Jocebed, wife of Amram and mother to Aaron, Miriam, and Moses. She placed her trust in God and brought an illegal child into the world, hiding him from those who would kill him. She watched, waited, and used the heathen culture of her people’s enemies against them.
We know the rest; the pharaoh’s daughter comes to bathe and finds Moses. He cries and she takes pity on him, knowing he was a Hebrew! A girl appears and says, “may I fetch you a nurse to suck your baby?” and this educated woman of Egypt says, “yes.” Do you think she didn’t know this nurse would be the child’s mother? Wow. Just to imagine these three women and the things they chose to do… Jocebed in faith and love, Miriam in obedience, faith, and love, and Pharaoh’s daughter in love and pity of a child who she took into her home in defiance of her father’s order.
Just some thoughts.
I know that most of us spend today thinking about our mothers. Not to say I don’t! But I love to step into the shoes of those before. I love to try to see their struggles – how powerful Jocabed’s faith! Not only to give birth and refuse to destroy her boy, but to give that little gift in faith to another believing that God will allow her rather devious plan to work trusting her family can pass their faith on to this child in the short amount of time they will have him (while she nurses him).
Wow.
Think about the various challenges we mothers face at different points in history, through various cultures, and in various strata of existence. All of our stories are different, but the theme of faith, love, and hope permeate them all. We all want the best for our gifts and pray to effectively train them up in the little time we have them.
Give thanks for the mothers and grandmothers and motherly influences in your life.
Thank you, God, for mothers!
Thank you for Reading,
~Nancy Tart