'When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank. '
Exodus 2:3 ESV
I never really knew or understood pain until I became a father. There is something about watching your kids go through pain that takes you to a place that you can't explain or would even want to try.
When I read the story of Moses and his mother found in the second chapter of Exodus, I see a mother that had to be in excruciating pain. She had to place her newborn son in a floating basket and set him loose in the Nile River. A river full of crocodiles, hippopotamus, and snakes. The desperation she must have felt at that moment is incomprehensible. And the whole time she had to trust in God and His protection over her son. She set him loose to save his life. Sounds kind of nuts doesn't it. Let a mother do that today in the Mississippi River and she will buy a one-way ticket to the jailhouse. But it was either give him over to God or allow Pharoh to murder her son. She chose to trust in the Lord and rely on His protection over her son.
This makes me think about how people that don't have a personal relationship with God view times like these. Where does their hope come from? Where do they turn when troubling times come? And how do we, as Christians, view these folks? How do we affect the lost in the world when we casually tell them to simply trust in God when they don't know who God is?
As a Christian, I find myself saying things to myself and others like: "If you were a better person, a stronger person, a "true" believer, then you'd just trust God." And let me tell you that it ain't that simple. Don't believe me? Take your newborn son and put him on a raft and put him in the Mississippi River. Or how about take your teenage son for a scan of his head and have the doctor come back and tell you they "found" something on his brain stem. How simple is it to trust God then?
It is those times when we encounter people that don't know God or maybe have forgotten Him, that find themselves in an unthinkable, horrible situation. We should tell them that trusting God is the best option. Use our own story but in a gentle way to explain how faith in God and trust in the power of the Holy Spirit can see them through this troubling time. What someone that has an emergency or troubling time in their life needs is a real friend and brother/sister that speaks in love and gentleness, not a flippant theological quote. You never know when it might be your world that is collapsing around you, so think about what you would want to hear in that situation.
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