Before The Reveal

attendants walked along the riverbank.  When the princess saw the basket among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it for her.  When the princess opened it, she saw the baby.  The little boy was crying, and she felt sorry for him.  “This must be one of the Hebrew children,” she said. 

Then the baby’s sister approached the princess.  “Should I go and find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” she asked. 

“Yes, do!” the princess replied.  So the girl went and called the baby’s mother. 

“Take this baby and nurse him for me,” the princess told the baby’s mother.  “I will pay you for your help.”  So the woman took her baby home and nursed him.  – Exodus 2:5-9 

Nearly thirty years ago, I was not sure work could ever make me happy.  Some mornings I could barely get myself out of bed and out the door.  I was only a couple of years into marriage, and my wife and I were still learning how to be a team.  Our children were adjusting to having Dad in the house full time, and the differences between their mother and me sometimes led them to keep their distance.  If you had asked me where my life stood, “challenging” would have been a generous word. 

I would love to tell you that is where I found God.  But that was still four years away.  What I could not see at the time was that God already knew exactly who I was, and He was quietly setting up a reintroduction I would never be able to explain away.  I had grown up in church and then drifted, convinced I was not worthy of His love and destined to be separated from Him. 

Maybe you have lived through a season like that.  One where God felt distant, or where you were not looking for Him at all.  What we often miss in those seasons is that His plan for us usually begins long before we ever turn toward Him. 

Think about the story of Moses.  That he would become the one to lead God's people out of Egypt seems almost impossible.  He grew up as one of Egypt's own and, by every appearance, should have spent his life serving Egypt.  And yet God had set a plan in motion from the moment he was born.  It all led to the moment God would reveal Himself, and Moses could only ask, “Who am I to appear before Pharaoh?  Who am I to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt?”  (Exodus 3:11b) 

Look closely at how Moses was rescued, and you find God's fingerprints long before Moses could recognize them.  Pharaoh had ordered every Hebrew baby boy drowned in the Nile, yet it was the Nile that carried Moses to safety.  Pharaoh's own daughter came down to bathe, spotted the basket among the reeds, and felt compassion for a child she knew was Hebrew.  Then, in a detail almost too gracious to believe, Moses' sister arranged for the baby's own mother to nurse him, and the princess paid her to do it (Exodus 2:5–9).  The child marked for death was raised in the palace of the very throne that wanted him gone. 

Moses did nothing to earn that.  He was an infant.  He could not believe, obey, or even understand who was watching over him.  And yet the path that would one day free Israel was already being laid, quietly, through the hands of people who had no idea what God was doing through them. 

That is what makes his later question so honest.  When God finally called him from the burning bush, Moses didn't feel ready.  He was still measuring himself by what he could see.  But God had never been working with Moses' résumé.  He had been working from His own plan set in motion decades before Moses was willing to walk in it. 

Maybe that is the quiet comfort in your own story.  The distance you feel from God, or once felt, was never distance on His side.  The stretch that felt like drifting may have been the very season He was drawing the map.  He does not wait for us to become worthy before He begins.  He begins, and then He waits for us. 

For four of those years, I assumed God had forgotten me.  Looking back, I can see He was simply preparing the reintroduction.  Arranging the moment I would finally understand who He was.  Where might God already be at work in a part of your life you have quietly written off?  And what would change if you believed His plan for you began long before you ever turned toward Him? 

My prayer is we are thankful His love reaches for us before we reach for Him.  Father, when we feel far off or unworthy, remind us that You are already at work, authoring a story we cannot yet see.  Help us trust the plan we do not fully understand, and give us courage to walk in it when You call.  Amen.