An Advent Journey - 1st December

Read: Exodus 2 vs 1-10

Every morning we listen to the radio, glance at our phone, or pick up a paper and there is news. Lots of news. The news we hear and read tends to be about famous people, powerful people, important people. Babies rarely make the news.

The story of Christmas is the story of a baby. But long before the first Christmas we find that the Bible tells one great story with a number of ‘baby stories’ tucked in along the way. This morning we come to one of those stories. God’s people had become a nation, just as God had promised Abraham. But instead of ending in their own ‘Promised Land’ by the beginning of the book of Exodus God’s people are in Egypt, where they were living as slaves under the ruthless rule hand of Pharaoh. This is not a good moment in the story.

God’s people were miserable, but God heard and saw His people, and God did what God so often does. God set out to save and rescue His people in a surprising way. God sent a baby. From the minute that Moses was born his life was under threat. But God had a plan, and when God has plan, nothing and no one can get in the way. A powerful ruler, a terrible law (that Hebrew boys were to be killed at birth), and a very perilous cot (a basket floating in the River Nile) none of these things derail God’s plan, to save and to rescue. 

Today God is at work. He is at work in this world. He is at work in your life. Often in surprising ways. Faith receives this as news, and steps into the day, trusting a God who we cannot see but who is doing more than we can ever imagine.