Reading Ex 2:1-15a
A certain man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman,
who conceived and bore a son.
Seeing that he was a goodly child, she hid him for three months.
When she could hide him no longer, she took a papyrus basket,
daubed it with bitumen and pitch,
and putting the child in it,
placed it among the reeds on the riverbank.
His sister stationed herself at a distance
to find out what would happen to him.
Pharaoh’s daughter came down to the river to bathe,
while her maids walked along the riverbank.
Noticing the basket among the reeds, she sent her handmaid to fetch it.
On opening it, she looked, and lo, there was a baby boy, crying!
She was moved with pity for him and said,
“It is one of the Hebrews’ children.”
Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter,
“Shall I go and call one of the Hebrew women
to nurse the child for you?”
“Yes, do so,” she answered.
So the maiden went and called the child’s own mother.
Pharaoh’s daughter said to her,
“Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will repay you.”
The woman therefore took the child and nursed it.
When the child grew, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter,
who adopted him as her son and called him Moses;
for she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
On one occasion, after Moses had grown up,
when he visited his kinsmen and witnessed their forced labor,
he saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his own kinsmen.
Looking about and seeing no one,
he slew the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
The next day he went out again, and now two Hebrew were fighting!
So he asked the culprit,
“Why are you striking your fellow Hebrew?”
But the culprit replied,
“Who has appointed you ruler and judge over us?
Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?”
Then Moses became afraid and thought,
“The affair must certainly be known.”
Pharaoh, too, heard of the affair and sought to put Moses to death.
But Moses fled from him and stayed in the land of Midian.
In today’s reading, we have the story of the miraculous deliverance of Moses and his eventual flight from Egypt.
It’s such an amazing story. We could ask ourselves, how come Pharaoh’s daughter (Hatshepsut by name according to Egyptian history) came to the river at that time?
How is it that she felt compassion and didn’t carry out her father’s edict? Could it be what is said in proverbs 21:1- “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will”?
Can you see how it all played out that Moses mum was giving the royal duty of nursing and nurturing Moses and she even got paid for this?
When Moses was about three years old, he returned to the palace of Pharaoh and was adopted as a member of the royal family. He enjoyed the best education in Arithmetic, medicine and reading. He was schooled in administrative skills, leadership skills, foreign relation, jurisprudence etc. (Act 7:22).
Why was this so?
With the benefit of insight, we have come to see that God was preparing him for something. He will become a leader of over two million people, he will judge them for over forty years, and he will constitute them into a fighting force.
Can we all see God in the life and story of Moses? We see how everything now made sense and fit into God’s plans. When all these were happening, Moses and his family had no clue what God was doing. The parents and siblings of Moses could have been asking God why will he allow their child/brother to be in the corrupt, immoral and idolatrous palace of Egypt. Little did they know what God had in mind.
This is the story of Moses. This is not different from your story too. You may be in some confusing situations but always keep in mind that God is in complete control, working out a plan through the circumstances of our lives, our concern is not to figure it all out but to look at everything with Godly perspective.
Let us pray – “Lord, help me to see your hands at work in my journey of life, teach me how to relax in the assurance that you are in complete control. “
Sermon preached by Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Okami on July 16, 2019