There’s a particular tiredness that comes from loving someone you can’t protect.
You know it if you’ve watched a child walk into a school you weren’t sure about. You know it if you’ve handed a parent over to a care home and driven away with shaking hands. You know it if you’ve prayed for a friend for years and watched them keep choosing the thing that hurts them. You did everything. It still wasn’t enough.
Jochebed knew that tiredness. Egypt had ordered every Hebrew baby boy killed, and she hid her son for three months. Ninety days of holding your breath in a house where one cry could end everything. And then hiding stopped working, so she wove a basket, sealed it with tar, and set it among the reeds at the river’s edge.
The world calls that giving up. Scripture calls it faith. “It was by faith that Moses’ parents hid him for three months when he was born. They saw that God had given them an unusual child, and they were not afraid of the king’s command” (Hebrews 11:23, NLT).
Notice three things. First, she did everything she could before she let go. Faith isn’t the opposite of doing your best. Faith is what you do with the bit left over when your best runs out. Second, she placed him in the water but didn’t walk away from the water. There’s a difference between surrender and abandonment, and heaven knows it even when your heart cannot feel it. Third, she never saw the end of the story. No princess on the horizon, no son standing before Pharaoh. She did the next right thing and left the rest with God.
That’s most of us, most of the time.
So here’s today’s one step. Name the thing you cannot carry. Say it out loud if you can. Then pray: God, I’ve done what I can. This part is yours.
You’re not quitting. You’re placing something precious in the water before a God who has never lost anything given to him. And please hear this: you are not a better parent or friend or carer for gripping tighter. Your worth was never in your grip. You are loved already, before you fix a single thing.
Watch today’s 5-minute devotional here:
What one thing do you need to place in the basket this week? Reply and tell me. I read them all and pray over every one.