E X O D U S  2. v1-10

 

The Sunday next, is the day we celebrate what is known as Mothers’ Day in the United States of America, and Mothering Sunday in the United Kingdom; we add a spiritual attachment  to distinct a religious celebration from the business approach.

 This day is an opportunity to emphasize the debt we owe to those to all who were a mother, who through good or bad times, cared for their son or daughter,  Mothers sacrifice themselves in every possible ,way to support and care for their child

 It is to show an example of how this manifests such care, by looking at a story in the book of Exodus in the Old Testament. This is an account of the birth and development of a dominant and revered man of Israel’s history.

 The land of Israel faced extinction, as it has through the years, when the power of Egypt, was ready to use all resources to eliminate the people of God for all time.

 A number of Jewish people had moved from Israel to Egypt, and were becoming as many as the Egypt people, when a new king came to power as Pharaoh, and made a decree.  This required all midwives to kill all babies born as male. God was good, and some midwives did not keep to the decree, and saved boys. One of the families was that of Amram and his wife Jochebed, who became pregnant and bore a son. She hid the son for three months, and then had to make plans for the future.

 Jochebed mad a basket with papyrus seeds, and made it waterproof, by a mixture of tar and pitch.  The baby was put in the basket, and was taken to some bushes on the bank of the River Nile.  The sister of the baby boy kept watch to see if any one went to the basket,  and one day saw the daughter of Pharaoh walking along the bank of the river with her maids, and they heard the baby crying, so stopped to look at the basket.  They realized it was a Hebrew child.

 The sister approached the Princess, and asked if she would like a Hebrew mother to look after the baby, and be a nurse for him. The Princess was pleased, and asked the sister to find such a woman. The sister went and fetched the mother, and  the Princess offered to pay the mother if she would be a nurse, and it was agreed, so the mother took the baby back home. The boy grew, so the mother took the baby back to the Princess, who decided to adopt the child as her son.  She called him Moses.

 This is but one example of the extent a mother will go to protect her child, Jochebed was prepared to see her son grow up with another woman, instead of facing certain death.

 Many of you reading this story, will have felt similar times relating to yourself.  My own wife, spent her life caring for her sons, as many of you will have done. How we must thank God for giving women such self-sacrificing natures, even if it makes men realize how lucky we are, that God favored us with such ‘helpers’ to be our wives. No longer can we call women the weaker sex!

 This passage is the Epistle for Mothering Sunday.  The Gospel message will follow, in which we continue to witness the glory and grace of God