This year at my church we’ve been invited to bring our Bibles and notebooks to help us reflect on what we are studying. The notes I’ve made have been really interesting for me, and there is always something I can relate to, draw comfort from or feel encouraged by… and it’s not always the ‘easy’ side of Christianity either, there are some real challenges that have got me thinking. Sharing my notes in a blog post is a useful way for me to reflect on them later in the day.
Sermon 11th March 2018
Today is Mother’s Day. We listened to this passage from Exodus 2: 1-10 (CEV).
A man from the Levi tribe married a woman from the same tribe, 2 and she later had a baby boy. He was a beautiful child, and she kept him inside for three months. 3 But when she could no longer keep him hidden, she made a basket out of reeds and covered it with tar. She put him in the basket and placed it in the tall grass along the edge of the Nile River. 4 The baby’s older sister stood off at a distance to see what would happen to him.
5 About that time one of the king’s daughters came down to take a bath in the river, while her servant women walked along the river bank. She saw the basket in the tall grass and sent one of the young women to pull it out of the water. 6 When the king’s daughter opened the basket, she saw the baby and felt sorry for him because he was crying. She said, “This must be one of the Hebrew babies.”
7 At once the baby’s older sister came up and asked, “Do you want me to get a Hebrew woman to take care of the baby for you?”
8 “Yes,” the king’s daughter answered.
So the girl brought the baby’s mother, 9 and the king’s daughter told her, “Take care of this child, and I will pay you.”
The baby’s mother carried him home and took care of him. 10 And when he was old enough, she took him to the king’s daughter, who adopted him. She named him Moses because she said, “I pulled him out of the water.”
Our vicar spoke about the emotions and struggles of a mother who felt she had no choice but to put her baby out onto the water, to let him go in the hope that somehow he would be okay. The Nile was a river of death, where the bodies of the Hebrew children had been discarded on Pharaoh’s orders. This mother, feeling the danger coming closer, made a reed basket and set her baby out on the water, releasing him to she didn’t know what but knowing that it was better than staying.
Most parents will have experienced times when they’ve had to ‘let their child go’, to put their own fears and needs aside to allow their child to get that next level of independence. Even as soon as just after birth, the first time you leave your baby with anyone other than you is one of the most significant introductions to this type of parental love. We know our children can’t and shouldn’t be tied to us and spend our lives trying to strike a balance between holding them close enough to protect, strengthen, love and support them, yet far enough to help them become their own person and live their own life.
What resonated with me most, however, about the image of Moses’s mother, was the death of Abi. I’ve read this passage countless times, I know this story so well, yet verse three stood out to me today.
3 But when she could no longer keep him hidden, she made a basket out of reeds and covered it with tar. She put him in the basket and placed it in the tall grass along the edge of the Nile River.
I identified with the mother placing her precious baby in a basket and giving that unwilling gentle nudge, not even a push, as she lets him go. We put Abi’s body into a woven casket made of willow, we followed the casket to the church, and then to the crematorium, and then I looked on helpless as I let her go. This is not about the ‘letting go of my grief’, this is about the physical act of leading my child to a new place, alone.
There is significance about the letting go, because as a grieving mother there is no letting go. In the grieving mother’s mind you want to stand by that casket forever – you don’t care about life or death, that people might feel awkward if you made a scene, that they would try to convince you it’s not a good idea – you just don’t want to ‘push’ that casket away. But we do. I did. It was the final way of giving her back to God, of trusting Him to care for her. I may have let Abi physically go but she is always part of me. I’ve no doubt Moses’s mother would have felt similar grief.
Moses was saved, picked out of the water by royalty, welcomed into a prosperous kingdom, and even reunited with his own mother.
That’s where my comfort lies.
chasingdragonfliesblog.com 
It is an act of a strong and faithful women and mother. I am not sure about the letting go part of that scenario. I do believe that my son is of in the presence of God but I am not sure that is the choice of words I would use. I will always wish for my son to be here long after me but God chose another path. He is no longer suffering, he is at peace, but he is always missed and longed for. We are all learning to continue to live each day with all the gifts he gave us and the gifts of our father in heaven gave us. I am thankful for God choosing me to be his mother. However, letting go, moving on, being at peace are phrases I can never use. I do like some of the analogies and that God found the right place for Moses.
Thank you so much Yvonne, I understand your view on that. The term ‘letting go’ is so often used in grief. Here, I am trying to describe the physical action of letting my daughter go (into the hands of the undertakers), letting her go on alone, not in the ‘getting over it sense’. The moment described in this scene is a mother’s strength in having to do the thing she would never dream she’d do. A place I had found myself. xx