It was the end of the day and almost time for the museum to close. My family decided to spend the last thirty minutes walking through an Old Testament experience. I didn’t know what to expect, but as the first flicker of light appeared, we entered into an immersive experience highlighting pivotal moments of the Bible.
I followed my children into the next room of the exhibit. My eyes roamed over the image of a grieving mother stepping from the edge of a riverbed and into the water—her arms pushing away what her heart longed to hold. I wondered what she heard in that moment and in the ones before. What did she hear louder than the wails of her child? What did she sense deeper than the sounds of the Nile River she was placing her baby into? How does a mother make a choice like that?
I thought of these things as I stood mesmerized by the image of Jochebed, the mother of Moses, leaned over that basket. Her posture pulsed with grief, obedience, and ultimate submission. And even though I’ve read and heard the story hundreds of times, seeing the visual of this mother placing her baby into the river captured me. What a choice she made. We often hear about the choices Moses made as he carried out God’s instruction to bring deliverance to his people. But would Moses have been positioned for that if his mother didn’t make the choice to lean in and listen?
Maybe we’ll never know the exact emotions coursing through Jochebed. We can try to guess as we ponder what it means for us to relinquish the desires of our hearts. For those of us who have walked the path of cross-cultural, multi-country ministry, there are many things that we have released that we really wanted to hold onto. But somehow, despite the opinions of others, the noise of the culture, or even the cacophony of our own wants and desires, we leaned in to listen to the Lord. And in that listening, in that leaning in, we were presented with an invitation to choose something that didn’t make sense to the natural eye or to most people’s minds but reverberated with the will of God in heaven.
As my family journeyed through the exhibit, another figure stopped me in my tracks. I knew her story well and had recently spoken about her in a message to a gathering of women just a few weeks before. Yet I paused at the image of Ruth and Boaz, caught up in considering the cost and weight of her choice. Ruth not only leaned in to listen, but she leaned so far toward the Lord that she found herself tucked under his wings and placed within Jesus’s lineage.
“The Lord repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.” Ruth 2:12 NKJV
This verse comes a chapter after her declaration to Naomi that she wouldn’t leave her and that Naomi’s God would be her God. What did Ruth hear to make such a statement? What did she hear despite the noise of the culture she was born into? What did she sense deeper than the loud wails of her own grief as she lost father-in-law and brother-in-law and husband? Despite the opinions of others, and even the words of her mother-in-law telling her to return home, what did she hear?
These women didn’t just listen on the surface but leaned their whole lives towards taking hold of the One who had taken hold of them. Even when their circumstances were so far removed from their greatest hopes, or even echoed with their darkest fears, they still leaned in. As my family walked out of the museum of the Bible that day, I couldn’t help thinking about the choices that God had placed before me. Sometimes the choices are not just life and death or large-scale. Sometimes the hardest choices to make are minimal and mundane and in moves that seem so opposite to our nature. Moves that take us from just listening at the surface into obeying with our whole selves, our whole lives leaned in a posture of submission as we find refuge from all other noise under God’s wings.
How has obedience to the Lord moved you beyond your comfort? Who in the Bible, or in your life, encourages you as you make your own daily choices to lean in and listen?
