Faith That Lets Go

Mother: Jochebed
Scripture: Exodus 2:3 NIV

There are moments in motherhood when nurturing looks gentle and close — holding, comforting, protecting, guiding. And then there are moments when nurturing requires something far more painful.

Sometimes love must open its hands.

Jochebed, the mother of Moses, stood in the impossible tension between protection and surrender. Pharaoh had ordered the Hebrew baby boys to be killed, and for three months she hid her son as long as she could. Every day she likely listened carefully for danger, guarded his cries, and carried the exhausting weight of fear in her heart. But eventually, the moment came when she could no longer keep him hidden safely.

Exodus 2:3 NIV says:

“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.”

Imagine the heartbreak of that moment. A mother placing her child into a basket and setting him into waters she could not control. Every instinct within her likely wanted to hold him tighter, shield him longer, and somehow guarantee his safety.

Yet faith required release.

Not because she stopped loving him.
Not because she gave up.
But because there are moments when love recognizes its own limits and chooses to trust God beyond them.

That kind of surrender is one of the deepest forms of nurturing faith can take.

As mothers, it is difficult to imagine anything more painful than releasing a child you desperately want to protect. In many ways, Jochebed’s story echoes the courage of mothers who place their children for adoption. That kind of decision is often misunderstood, but at its core, it can be one of the bravest acts of love imaginable. It is the painful recognition that loving someone deeply sometimes means surrendering your own desire to hold on so that they might have what you cannot fully provide alone.

Jochebed released Moses into God’s hands without knowing how the story would unfold. Yet God, in His mercy, allowed her not only to protect her son through surrender, but to continue nurturing him in the process. The very child she released was returned to her care for a season. What looked like loss became evidence that God was already working beyond what she could see.

There is something deeply beautiful about the way God moved ahead of her surrender. Before Jochebed could see the outcome, God was already arranging protection, provision, and restoration. Pharaoh’s daughter would find Moses. Jochebed would be called to nurse and raise her own son. The child she feared losing would one day help deliver an entire people.

Sometimes God’s provision does not arrive by removing the surrender. Sometimes it comes by meeting us within it.

Jochebed’s story also echoes another powerful act of surrender in Scripture — Abraham placing Isaac on the altar. Though the circumstances are different, both stories reveal the painful reality of entrusting someone deeply loved into the hands of God. Neither surrender was emotionless. Neither act was easy. Both required faith strong enough to trust God beyond visible outcomes.

And in both stories, God met the surrender with His presence.

For Abraham, God provided the ram.
For Jochebed, God preserved Moses and returned him to her care.

These stories remind us that faith is not always proven in what we hold onto. Sometimes faith is revealed in what we are willing to release into God’s care.

There are seasons when we desperately try to hold everything together — our children, our futures, our plans, our finances, our unanswered prayers. We exhaust ourselves trying to protect what was never meant to rest entirely in our hands. Yet surrender is not abandonment. Surrender says, “God, I trust You to carry what I cannot.”

The illness we cannot fix.
The child we cannot shield forever.
The future we cannot force into place.
The burden we cannot continue carrying alone.

Faith does not always remove uncertainty immediately. But it reminds us that God remains present even in the waters we fear most.

What Jochebed released into uncertainty was never released outside of God’s sight.

And neither is what you are carrying today.

Sometimes the greatest act of nurturing is not holding tighter.
Sometimes it is trusting God enough to let go.

Reflection

What am I still trying to carry alone because I am afraid to release it into God’s hands?

Prayer

Lord, teach me the kind of faith that trusts You even when I cannot see the outcome clearly. Help me release the things I was never meant to control alone. When fear tells me to hold tighter, remind me that Your hands are safer than mine could ever be. Give me courage to surrender what I love, trusting that You are faithful even in uncertainty. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Leona