“The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live. The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.”
Exodus 1:15-17 (NIV)
This story tells us the actual names of the two midwives who followed their conscience and refused to kill the male babies born to those living under the oppression of slavery.
The Hebrew slaves at the time were multiplying rapidly and Pharaoh wanted to keep their numbers under control, by killing the male infants. Shiphrah and Puah pretended to obey Pharaoh’s orders, but secretly defied his ruling and let all the male babies live. Pharaoh would have had the midwives killed if he knew they intentionally protected those babies.
The two midwives revered God more than the King and in saving the baby boys, they saved their own future deliverer-Moses, who was not killed, but later placed in a basket on the Nile River, by his mother, trusting God to protect him.
The rest of that story is history, or to Jews better known as the Passover story. Even though most people know the Passover story from the movie, The Ten Commandments, not much emphasis is ever made on what Shiphrah and Puah did for that generation. If it were not for the courage of two midwives, and the mother of Moses, the Israelites would not have been delivered from slavery.
There were many other courageous women in history after them, one being Joan of Arc, a seventeen year old girl, who earnestly prayed for her country, when it was under England’s dominance. In her prayers, she asked God to send “a Moses” to deliver France. God told Joan that He was sending her. She boosted the morale of the French army and they eventually won their independence.
Rosa Parks was a civil rights icon, who refused to sit in the “colored”section of a bus in 1955. One year later, the courts deemed bus segregation unconstitutional. Her courage and boldness, set a civil rights movement into action.
God doesn’t hesitate in raising up courageous women to accomplish feats that change lives and history.
I just learned a true story about a woman who was used by God during one of the darkest times in history.
Irena Sendler was a polish gentile who worked as a nurse and social worker, employed by the Warsaw department of public health during Nazi occupation. She and some of her female coworkers secretly worked with an underground group to help save Jewish children living in the Warsaw ghetto.
Irena was bold enough to go into the Warsaw ghetto, pretending to be there on official business of her profession, and then leave, carrying a Jewish baby either inside her suitcase, in a casket or inside of a potato sack. She had a dog in her car who was trained to bark nonstop, each time she drove away, so that no one could hear a baby crying.
Every child she saved was placed into a foster home, until they were eventually adopted, since most of their parents were later killed by the Nazis. I wonder how many times, Irena found it unsafe to remove a child, yet she returned to try again another day, driven by courage and compassion to save the young and innocent among the Warsaw ghetto.
Irena kept a list of all the names and destinations of each child she rescued. She placed the list in a jar and buried it in her yard. In 1943 the Gestapo started to discover what Irena was up to, and though she was beaten, she never disclosed a single name or the whereabouts of any children that she saved. Her list remained safely buried in the ground until after the war. She saved the lives of 2,500 children who were adopted into caring families.
She was sentenced to death until Zegota, the underground polish resistance organization, bribed the Nazi officials to set her free. Irena was freed and after recovering from broken bones and many beatings, she lived to the ripe age of 98. She was nominated in 2008 for a Nobel peace prize, and though she was denied, she is honored to this day in Israel, at Yad Vashem, a memorial dedicated to gentiles who saved lives during the Holocaust.
Most people probably never heard of Irena Sendler, or of those biblical midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, but all were women who put themselves at risk, while standing against the mainstream, to save innocent lives.
They were all women with faith, compassion and courage, who defied the cruel and unjust laws of their day. Their names may not be well known, but their compassionate deeds were known by every life they saved. They may not have received the rewards that this world offers, but their rewards are plentiful in heaven.
Lord, help us to always know first and foremost that our identity is in Christ, and give us the courage and compassion to stand up for the innocent ones in this world, who cannot protect themselves. Amen
