“Let Go and Let God”

Recently my wife and I were having dinner with two of our good friends, and on their wall I read a large wooden sign, “Let Go and Let God”. We all know the phrase, to the point that with many of us it has become a cliché. But as parents, do we really understand and apply this concept in raising our children?

The verse that struck this idea deeply came across my eyes just last week, as our junior highers are going through the book of Exodus. It’s a familiar story: the story of Moses’s mother hiding him from Pharaoh’s decree that all males born in Egypt were to be thrown into the Nile.

Exodus 2:1-4
“Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.”

Mo’s mom could have held onto him for a variety of legitimate reasons. After all, this tyrant was murdering children. She had every right to hold onto her son and protect him from the certain disaster that awaited him. But I believe this Levite woman had an unshakable faith in God, and believed that no matter what happened, God would see her through.

Has this happened to you? Have you ever come to the point where your child or teen is at a place that you would prefer to lock them in the house rather than expose them to the real and scary world out there? It’s a valid fear! But Moses’s mom feared God more than she feared Pharaoh, and I believe that is what gave her the strength to wrap her 3 month old, lay him in the basket, and send him downriver.

There are things we need to let go of: whether they are things we struggle with, things from the past, or even our children. If we give those things to God, He will take far greater care of them than we ever could! In the end of this story, Pharaoh’s daughter finds Moses, and sends for a Hebrew woman to come and nurse him. Guess who ends up nursing Moses? His own mother! She gave Moses and her fear up to the Lord, and in the end He brought her son back to her. But if she were to try and hang onto him, I believe the story would have had a more tragic ending.

A New Testament verse that is a parallel to this is found in Philemon 1:15: “perhaps he was for this reason separated from you for a while, that you would have him back forever”. I pray that we will all have the strength to LET GO, and LET GOD have all of our cares. We can cast them on Him, because He cares for us.
Pilgrim