Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds. (Ex. 2:5)
If your planner or to-do list is your best friend, you need to take a look in the reeds. If words like efficiency, productivity, or exhausted show up often in your mental vocabulary, you might benefit from a walk down to the Nile.
Pharaoh’s daughter walked there to get a bath when she scanned the reeds and saw a basket with a Hebrew baby inside. Had Pharaoh’s daughter overlooked the basket, God might have had someone else lift Moses from the water; but as the story stands, Moses lived because of one girl’s attentiveness in a mundane moment.
In picking up that basket, she showed that sometimes the most consequential moments of our lives come by what seems like blind chance. Life-changing relationships often start off as interrupted days. As important as efficiency is, the love Jesus marked us with is less concerned with productivity than attentiveness to those others overlook.
Love that picks up baskets makes us do things that flow against our schedules and our prejudices. Helping the immigrant, having lunch with someone who smells different than you, lingering when your annoying neighbor comes over to talk—those are inconvenient acts of love that help others feel seen, known, and loved.
Each day this week, do something to love someone you often overlook.
Ethan Linder is the college, young adult, and connections pastor at College Wesleyan Church in Marion, Indiana, where he resides with his wife and son. Ethan enjoys running, reading, and roasting coffee.
© 2019 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission.
Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
