Bless us O Lord, this day with your Holy Presence. Grant unto us to see the extent to which we share in this story. Work through this time so that we can trust you just a little bit more. Amen.
Psalm 89.1-5
There have been many times in my life when I have found myself sitting, confused, wondering "how in the world did I get into this situation?" Always the situation is a relatively ugly one, definitely not the way I would have planned things to go if I had been in charge of the universe. But regardless of how I would have liked thing to have gone, it's not the way they went. And so I found myself sitting, confused, wondering "how in the world did I get into this situation," and along with that, "how in the world is this going to end?" This, by the way, is definitely not a new experience for me. And I doubt that it is a new experience for anyone in this room.
Perhaps it is times like that that our faith is challenged most, those times when we feel hopelessly stuck in the mire, bogged down, spinning our tires, going nowhere fast.
Over time I've discovered that while it is hard often enough to trust our own lives into the hand of God when things get difficult, I've discovered that the trust that trusting ourselves with God is nothing compared to the trust that it takes to place our loved one's into the hand of God. I think that a lot of it is that when we entrust our own lives to God we are still in a position to have at least a little bit of control. We remain an active agent in how things turn out. For better or for worse we still remain part of the equation.
But it's a whole different story when we are in a position to entrust those we love entirely into the hands of God. We know we are no longer part of the action anymore. We know that we are not in a position to interfere. We know that we have to abandon completely any sense of control over the situation whatsoever. And on top of that, the stakes seem higher: If things don't turn out like we would like them to, people we care about will suffer. This is much, much harder indeed.
Perhaps that's why it's so rare to find people out there like Moses' mother. She knows that things are really bad in Egypt right now. Pharaoh has ordered that all Hebrew males are to die. Right now, she really doesn't have a lot of options.
One option, I guess, would be to hide the child. And I'm sure that this had been done. I'm sure that many mothers had tried this…and failed. Surely, Moses mother knew that if she tried to do the same, she would probably fail too. Perhaps at least then, she would have a little bit of control of the situation, she would know how the story of her son ended.
Instead, we see her walk a different path. Instead of behaving like the other mothers, she goes out on a limb. She has to do something, and what everybody else is doing doesn't seem to be working, soooo…she takes her child, puts him into a basket, and pushes him out into the water. In doing so, she relinquishes all control over the situation whatsoever, and places her very own child in God's hands alone.
Sometimes events in this world at large, or even certain events in our lives, give us cause to question the extent to which God is actively caring for us. Sometimes, it's facing severe illness that forces the challenge. Sometimes, it's dealing with the realities of the wars raging around us. Sometimes, it's dealing with the untimely death of a loved one. Sometimes it's financial crisis. Sometimes…well, it could be anything, anything that causes significant crisis, confusion, fear, insecurity. It is at those times that we have to struggle with how much we really believe that God is somehow still in control of our world-we struggle with our belief in God's loving divine providence (which is the church's big word for this all-consuming, loving care). And during those times, it can be difficult to sing of God's unfailing love, because at that moment divine providence is an experience that can seem so distant from the despairing reality in which we live.
I imagine that as Moses mother watched the basket go down that perhaps crocodile infested river, a river that could tip the basket and end the child's journey…I imagine that she must have felt like that: despairing. In fact, as she turns her back and walks away, I bet she probably did so fully expecting never to see this little boy again. But somehow, despite the intensity of her despair, in the midst of the doubt and confusion, she somehow this woman managed to maintain her trust that somehow, through it all, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would work through all of this. And somehow, this woman was able to manifest a trust so strong that she was even willing to place into that God's hands the most precious thing in her life: her little child.
Imagine her surprise when she is summoned by Pharaoh's daughter. As she arrives, she finds the one who called her holding a little child, a Hebrew child, a male. She is commanded, "Take this child away and nurse it for me." And as the Hebrew woman looks into the eyes of this child, she sees it is her own.
And as she leaves that place, it is a moment when all her despair, all her fear, all her worry disappear, and the shroud of darkness that clouds over her is banished. For as she looks down, she knows that she is holding in her very hands the grace of God. In her arms is the testimony that God's loving providence is real, that God has not forgotten, that God is faithful still.
Oh, the joy she feels, welling up in her, consuming her. It's the kind of experience that must be expressed somehow.
"Your love, O LORD, forever will I sing," chants the psalmist, "from age to age my mouth will proclaim your faithfulness. For I am persuaded that your love is established forever, you have set your faithfulness firmly in the heavens."
We started our worship today with those words in our call to worship. This is the song of the psalmist's grateful heart. It is the song that flows from knowing of God's faithfulness in everyday life, especially when times are tough.
I want us to engage our call to worship again, only a little differently this time. I want us to sing those words. I want us to really sing those words with the gratefulness that Moses' mother feels as she receives her child back into her hands, to sing the words with the gratefulness of a people overcome by God's grace.
I want you to sing it with me. Here's how it goes:
I could sing of your love forever…I could sing of your love forever. [a couple of times through]
To sing like that with a grateful heart to God. What experience is greater in this life? When we sing like that, we sing because of what has been revealed to us: that we are not alone.
And not just singing about how we as individuals or as a church community are not alone. No, I'm talking about "we" in a cosmic sense-it's an "all of creation" we. As we sing, we proclaim to all of creation: We are not alone. God's loving providence is real. God has not forgotten. God is faithful still. We know this from the book of Exodus, for unto the Hebrew peoples in Egypt, a child was born.
And of the Son,
And of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.