08/17/2026
🌿 Weekly Devotional: Where Are You in the Story?
Exodus 1:8–2:10
When we read the Bible, we naturally tend to identify with the good guys.
We are Moses, not Pharaoh. We are the courageous midwives, not the people giving the orders. We are the ones standing against injustice, not the ones benefiting from it.
But Scripture does more than give us heroes to admire. Sometimes it asks us to recognize ourselves in places we would rather not look.
Pharaoh, for example, is driven by fear. He looks at a group of people who are different from him and begins to see them as a threat. Fear becomes suspicion. Suspicion becomes oppression. Before long, things that should have been unthinkable begin to seem necessary.
The midwives stand somewhere very different. They have little power, but when Pharaoh commands them to participate in death, they refuse. They fear God more than Pharaoh.
Then there is Moses' family, a mother desperately trying to protect her child and a sister watching from the riverbank, ready to act when the opportunity comes.
And finally, Pharaoh's daughter. She belongs to the very household responsible for the suffering around her. She could simply accept the world as it is. Instead, when she encounters this vulnerable child, she chooses compassion.
Each person occupies a different place in the story. Each has different power, different fears, different choices to make.
And perhaps that is where this story begins to read us.
Where am I in the story?
Where does fear influence the way I see others?
Where does my position give me the opportunity to help, or the luxury of looking away?
Where might faithfulness require courage?
Where is compassion asking something of me?
We don't always get to choose where we stand in life. But we do get to choose how we will stand there.
The midwives could not overthrow Pharaoh. Moses' mother could not change Egypt. Miriam was only a girl standing beside a river. Pharaoh's daughter could not undo everything her father's kingdom had done.
But each could be faithful in the place where they stood.
And through those seemingly small acts of courage and compassion, God was already preparing the way for something none of them could yet see.
Maybe that is enough for us this week: to ask honestly where we are in the story, and then to be faithful there.
Prayer:
God, help us to see ourselves honestly. Show us where fear has shaped us, where comfort has made us blind, and where you are inviting us to courage and compassion. Give us grace to be faithful in the place where we stand. Amen.
