This blog is based on a Mother’s Day sermon that my mother preached at the United Methodist Church in my hometown of Brockport, New York before I was even born. My mother once told me about that Mother’s Day Sermon and about the importance of Moses’ mother.

Amazingly, when I was about 20, an old man mentioned (without any prompting by me) that he remembered that my mother had been a tremendous preacher in general and that she had given a Mother’s Day Sermon that was especially memorable.

Here is the passage “Moses’ Mother Saves Him” taken from my book The Promised Land, at pages 79-81.

Now we come to a vivid contrast between how Pharaoh vainly tried to establish the work of his hands and how God answers our prayers to “establish the work of our hands for us” (Psalm 90:17), as Moses prayed in Psalm 90.

The Pharaohs were using conventional ideas about how to establish the works of their hands. Indeed, the ancient Egyptians were experts at making things last “forever.”

They perfected the preservation of their bodies as mummies. And they built gigantic pyramids to preserve their bodies.

No wonder that in Psalm 90 Moses was preoccupied with how to achieve anything of lasting purpose—how to establish the work of his hands. For, as an educated Egyptian, he had absorbed the fatalistic despair of those who contemplate eons of time compared to our fleeting human lives.

Moses knew that God existed “from everlasting to everlasting” “before the mountains were born.” Indeed, God existed even before God “brought forth the earth and the world.” (Psalm 90:1-2).

And Moses knew that, in contrast, God “turn[s] [humans] back to dust” after our lives “quickly pass, and we fly away” (Psalm 90:3,10).

Moses understood that we “are like the new grass of the morning—though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered,” swept “away in the sleep of death.” (Psalm 90:5-6).

But to God “a thousand years . . . are like a day that has just gone by.” (Psalm 90:4).

Only great faith in your own power or great faith in God can overcome the despair that such reflections cause. Otherwise, we end up as depressed as the Teacher in Ecclesiastes who declared:

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” . . .

Utterly meaningless!

   Everything is meaningless.”

       (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

The Pharaohs had great faith in their power.

They enslaved others to build works of stone. And their hearts were as hard as their pyramids.

In the familiar pattern of racism, their fear and dislike of the Hebrews began in economic exploitation and ended in genocide. Pharaoh ordered that every baby boy born to a Hebrew must be thrown into the Nile! (Exodus 1:22).

Pharaoh would stop at nothing to see the works of his hands established in monuments of stone and in deeds of tyranny, racism and cruelty.

But Pharaoh did not understand something that is more certain than the survival of the pyramids—the certainty that God will save the downtrodden.

And Pharaoh did not know about something that is more powerful than any cruelty—the power of love.

The unraveling of Pharaoh’s grandiose plans started with the humblest and most common of pleasures, intimacies and commitments—“a man . . . married a . . . woman” (Exodus 2:1).

Pharaoh’s orders were defied, and his plans were waylaid, by a mother out of love for her baby. She hid her baby for three months. Then she entrusted his life to God. She put him in a basket along the Nile where he would either die or be found by an Egyptian. (Exodus 2:2-4).

Furthermore, Pharaoh’s schemes were defeated by an act of kindness by his own daughter. When she saw the little baby and heard him crying, “she felt sorry for him.” (Exodus 2:2-6). She adopted the baby, named him Moses, and made him a member of Pharaoh’s family. (Exodus 2:7-10).

To care for the baby, Pharaoh’s daughter hired Moses’ biological mother. This turned out to be a disastrous miscalculation that unraveled Pharaoh’s schemes.

Never underestimate the power of a mother!

Because Moses’ mother did far more than feed him with milk. She fed Moses with the Word of God.

She defeated the power of Pharaoh with the power of teaching. This power of a parent is greater than the power of any Pharaoh.

Because when Moses matured, he placed loyalty to the family of God above loyalty to the family of Pharaoh. (Hebrew 11:24-25).

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To read about how Moses established the work of his hands, please read “Establishing the Work of Your Hands: Moses” in my book The Promised Land, at pages 73-120.