Early this morning, before the sun was even up, I stood on the edge of Cranberry Lake. Glass smooth water surrounded me with the air a still crisp clean. There was no sound but the sky screamed to be noticed as the sun was pressing us toward dawn. God's creation was coming to life and it was stunningly beautiful.
But I was here for a reason beyond beauty. Something I wanted to wonder about in a place that would assist my imagination come to life. The specific was how Moses, the famous and well known biblical character, got his name.
When we read the text carefully we find the people of Israel in a harsh place. Motivated by insecurity and fear the Egyptians have pressed hard against God's people. Oppression is rampant and abuse is overflowing. It hits the crescendo of ugly when Pharaoh orders an infant genocide of all boys. "Throw them in the Nile River" he orders, "so they drown." Which is another way of saying, "So they don't come up."
And then a side story that becomes the main story. Which is why I stood at the edge of Cranberry Lake this morning.
There is a Levite man who marries a Levite woman. The woman becomes pregnant and gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. You know the story, I'm sure of it. Wanting to protect her child from Pharaoh's orders the woman hides her son. After three months she can't do it anymore . . . and so she gets a basket boat made of papyrus. She waterproofs it with tar and pitch and placed the boy in the basket. She then sets it afloat in the Nile. This is what I'm wondering, what was that like?
What was it like for a mother to have to place her three month old in a waterproof basket and leave him? To set him on the surface of the very place so many Hebrew boys had lost their life. Can you imagine? I try.
I imagine she brought him under the cover of darkness. This is not something you do in the daylight. I imagine that she stood waist deep in the water holding onto the basket, rocking it back and forth as she lingers for one last time. I imagine that her face contorts in sadness as she begins to weep, pushing the basket into the water and walking away. I imagine a level of grief and guilt and pain that I, to be honest, am unfamiliar with. I imagine that her mother's heart cries out in a prayer to God for something different to happen.
Miraculously something different does happen.
The daughter of Pharaoh, the offspring of the very man who gave the genocide order, comes down to the Nile to bathe. This is a strange place the Nile. Children die here and children bathe here, it just depends on which side you're born. As she bathes, she sees something. A basket under the camouflage of reeds. She sends her maid servant to see what it is. When the basket is brought to her, she opens it and finds a baby boy . . . crying. Crying like every other Hebrew baby boy brought to the Nile. Crying like the nation of Israel under harsh oppression and abuse. Crying like everyone of us who has ever suffered. Pharaoh's daughter, the text says, is moved by the child.
The child's sister swoops in, as a Hebrew girl she has no reason to fear. She suggests getting a nursing mother for the child which seems like a great idea to Pharaoh's daughter. The sister gets the mother and the mother and Pharaoh's daughter have a conversation. She will do what she wanted to do all along, only now she'll get paid for doing it.
And then a remarkable thing happens. Something I've never seen. Something I've skipped over all these years.
Pharaoh's daughter names the child. Not the Levite father. Not the mother. Not the sister. The daughter of the oppressor, the offspring of evil, the one who bathes in the pool of death, names the child.
He shall be called Moses because I pulled him out of the water.
This story makes me smile because it's my story. It's your story too. It's the story of baptism. I was supposed to die but I've been found by the offspring of another king and that offspring pulled me out. Out of the waters of death and into the remarkable life of being alive. Alive in Christ.
Standing beside Cranberry Lake early this morning, before the sun was up, I tried to imagine. I try to imagine what it was like. I think I know.
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