Moses’s Mother Reveals How Faith Isn’t Always What You Think

Hebrews 11 is one of my favorite chapters in the whole Bible. It is known as the “Hall of Faith.” Biblical faith is a verb. It’s less what you think and more how you walk. Hebrews 11 tells us what the ancients of Israel did. Abel offered. Noah built. Abraham went. And within these names of Israel’s greats, a woman shows us a different kind of faith.

Moses’ parents faith (verb) by hiding Moses (Hebrews 11:23). In Exodus 2, the story centers a woman, Moses’ mother Yocheved. She is the one faithing and acting, moving with tremendous risk and hope. She shows us a different kind of faith than many of the other stories. She faiths by “letting go and laying down.”

Under the oppression of an Egyptian pharaoh and his kingly edict to kill all Hebrew boys by throwing them into the Nile, Yocheved hides Moses until she can hide him no longer. She builds a basket with papyrus and coats it with pitch and tar. She builds a tevah, the Hebrew word for ark, places Moses in it and puts him in the Nile—in the very place of death for other Hebrew baby boys.

Noah built a tevah (ark), and it saved him and his family and animals in the great flood. Yocheved built her own ark, hopeful that salvation would find her baby boy in the waters of the Nile. She let her son go. She laid him down. This profound relinquishment would open up the rest of Moses’ story.

Yocheved’s Hall of Faith action here speaks a word to me! Sometimes the faithful adventure facing you isn’t one of addition, climbing, or ascending. Sometimes the faithful adventure will take you down, will start with loss, subtraction, and descent. While “down” is sometimes the beginning, it is never the end.

Sometimes the next things will not come to us, will not open to us until we let go and lay down the thing we are too tightly holding on to. Get quiet with the living God today and let Him speak into this.