Passages & Prayers: Out of the Weeds

Take some time to read through the passage, Exodus 2:1-10, then return to this reflection. 

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Again, I'm relying on one of the older ways to phrase this work of mercy for today's reflection - ransom the captive. Ransom is something most frequently reserved for the movies, or melodramatic novels, or somewhere else than here and now. However, I believe that now, more than ever do we need to ensure that we look to the challenge of ransoming the captives in our midst.

In ancient Egypt, during the time of Moses' infancy, slavery and genocide drove a young mother to leave her child in nothing more than a makeshift raft and float her son on a river clogged with the commercial traffic of the country. A rather harrowing journey that had peril at every side, embarked upon so that the young boy would hopefully have a future.

There are so many in our world, our country, and our city who face a desolate future. War, famine, drought, terrorism, violence, racism, hatred, or one of the other many evils of our day leave people with little hope and great fear. Some find the proverbial Nile to set out on, gambling on finding a safe shoal. Others do not even have that option. Some take immense risks, crossing oceans on rafts to escape war and terrorism, some commute on public transportation at all hours in unsafe neighborhoods to attend a better school, some carry their children across borders seeking work and a safe home for their child, some are individuals caught in the chains of mental illness or addictions struggling to live in a world that does not see their suffering.

Yes, this is a political issue. But we dare not let the politics drown out that first and foremost this is an issue of faith and of justice. The question we will be asked is not a political one, but, "What did you do for the least of these?"

The Pharaoh's daughter reached in to the weeds and brought forth the child. When she could have easily let the basket go by because the complications of ransoming this child, she knew it was a Hebrew child and she was the Pharaoh's daughter after all. Yet she ransomed the child from death, did what she could to offer the infant life and a future. 

The ransoming of the captives of Israel depended upon the ransoming of one small child. Imagine what we could do if we reach out to those in need of help, caught in the weeds of our modern world? What might those children, those people suffering, be able to accomplish for the world at large? How might Heaven rejoice?

Jennifer Delvaux
Director of Faith Formation

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