Sunday, June 1, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Exodus 1-2
Key Verse
Exodus 2:2 — “And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.”
Devotional Thought
Exodus opens not with a bang but with a list of names—Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, and the rest—a family of seventy souls who came down to Egypt with Jacob. It reads almost like a census, until verse six tolls like a bell: “And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation.” A whole era passes. The favored son who once saved Egypt is forgotten, and a new Pharaoh arises “which knew not Joseph.” What follows is the first great persecution of God’s people: taskmasters, rigour, bitter bondage in morter and brick, and finally an edict to drown every Hebrew son in the Nile. Yet even here, in the shadow of the dragon, God is quietly at work. The midwives Shiphrah and Puah fear God more than Pharaoh and let the boys live; God deals well with them and makes them houses. A Levite couple hides a “goodly child” in an ark of bulrushes among the flags; Pharaoh’s own daughter draws him out of the water and names him Moses. The river meant for death becomes the cradle of deliverance.
Notice how ordinary the instruments are. God does not send an angel army; He uses two midwives with a conscience, a mother with a waterproofed basket, a sister standing watch in the reeds, and a princess with a soft heart. Then notice how long the silence lasts. Moses grows up in Pharaoh’s house, kills an Egyptian, flees to Midian, marries Zipporah, names his son Gershom—”I have been a stranger in a strange land”—and settles in. Meanwhile, back in Egypt, the king dies and the people sigh. Verses twenty-three through twenty-five are the hinge of the whole book: “And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant… and God had respect unto them.” God had not forgotten. He never does.
This first day of June, as summer begins and the year stretches ahead, many of us know what it is to live between the groaning and the deliverance. The bondage has not lifted yet. The answer has not come. But Exodus teaches us that God’s silence is not God’s absence. He hears the sighing no one else notices. He remembers a covenant made centuries before to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And He is already preparing a deliverer—perhaps in a palace, perhaps in a desert, perhaps in a basket by the river’s brink.
Reflection
- Where in your life does it feel like God has gone quiet while the burden only grows heavier—and can you trust that He still hears your groaning?
- Like Shiphrah, Puah, and Moses’ mother, are you willing to fear God more than the powers that threaten you, even in small, hidden acts of obedience?
Prayer
O God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we come to You as a people who sometimes groan under burdens we cannot lift. You are the God who hears, who remembers covenant, who looks upon His children with compassion. When the world forgets us, You do not. When the night is long and no deliverer appears, teach us to wait with the patience of the midwives and the courage of Moses’ mother. Give us grace to fear You above every Pharaoh, and to trust that You are even now preparing our redemption in ways we cannot see. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.