Heroes: Devotions From Time of Grace MinistrySample

SACRIFICE: JOCHEBED

When the subject of adoption comes up, there is generally a good vibe when the transplanted child succeeds in the new home. But we are generally aware of the strains and expense on the adoptive parents, and we acknowledge that the day a child finds out he or she was adopted can be traumatic. But we rarely think much about the birth mother and her grief, since we rarely know who she is.

Think about Jochebed. Her name in Hebrew would have sounded something like yo-CHEV-ed. She and her husband, Amram, had the terrible misfortune to live as slaves in Egypt at the very time that the pharaoh had declared the death penalty on all boy babies.

"Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile." (Exodus 2:1-3)

This woman is a hero. She sacrificed her own motherly needs and put her son Moses up for a watery adoption to give him a chance to live. She hoped that an Egyptian woman would see the little basket and have enough compassion to spare him. She suffered the terrible loss that her dear little Moses would now call another woman "Mommy." Her plan worked, and God used this noble act to have his future leader raised and educated in the Egyptian royal court.