Countdown: 21... A Baby in a basket

Jochebed took her 12 week old son and placed him into the carrier she had improvised.  She'd woven reeds into a basket; covered it in bitumen and pitch for waterproofing, carefully placing it among the bullrushes at the edge of the Nile.

She was obeying Pharaoh's command by putting him into the Nile. She did it with craft and care. She put her son into the Nile hoping he would and praying he would be found.  She stationed her daughter Miriam to watch the baby in the basket.

Since Jospeh's dying wish many years had passed. Egypt, the place of rescue, had become the place of oppression and slavery for the people who lived under the promises God had made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  The people of the sons of Israel were slaves.  As so often happens as one nation subjugates another, loathing had turned to fear.

The 'man-god' leading Egypt decreed a culling of the sons of Israel's people.  They were to be cast to the Nile: the source of fertility and an object of worship. The fruit of Israel was to be swallowed up in the depths of the Nile.

Where is God? Where are his promises? What is going on? The cries of the mothers and fathers of the boys at the bottom of the Nile went unanswered.  The moaning and the groaning of the people of God's Promise went out and there was no answer.

What they couldn't see was the answer in a basket, in the bushes, watched by a little girl. God heard the cries and had not forgotten his promises. God was watching. God had heard. 

The boy in the basket in the bullrushes was found and taken into the care of the daughter of the man who had ordered his destruction.  This child was Moses. 

Moses would be the answer to the cries, through him God would destroy the destroyers of his people and the enemies of His promises. Moses turned the Nile to blood and drew water from rocks; he split the waters and walked on the ocean bed, he called down plagues and administered justice to the unjust. He met with God and his face shone with the power of it.

God would speak to Moses, speak through Moses, and lead His people to the land of promise.  Moses was 40 years in the house of Pharaoh, 40 years in the wilderness and 40 years leading the people to the verge of the land of the  promise of God. In the end he was a sinful and fragile man in the hands of a mighty God. He was unique in history.

Thousands of years later there would be another child, laid in an unlikely place who would be the fulfillment of promises. He would be the hope of the years, the answers to all prayers, the Judge who will answer all injustice and the Saviour to save the lost. He would be like Moses in many ways but in one way he was not. He was a fragile man but he was also the Mighty God.

In a stable, in a food trough, lay the child who was the Son of God. Jesus, God's Son, Anointed and appointed one. Watched by a young woman, her husband, a few shepherds, a host of rejoicing angels.

God's promises not forgotten... just well hidden in human flesh.