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17 The midwives, however, feared God
and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let
the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives
and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys
live?”
“Freedom is not
free”, the great words engraved on one of the walls at Korean
War Veterans Memorial, Washington D.C., was coined by Colonel
Walter Hitchcock. It is a hard truth and reality. Let it be
any sort of freedom, whether it be a nation’s struggle, communities’
or personal. Struggle for freedom calls for giving up
many important or valuable things in our life: time, money, family
and even our life.
Recently, India
celebrated its 69th Independence Day. It is a time when we
recollect the sacrifices of our freedom fighter. In our
history books, we read about the sacrifices of great leaders like
Bhagat Singh, Mahatma Gandhi, Rani Laxmi bai, Sardar Patel etc. but
there are many more thousands who sacrificed for the freedom but
are unnoticed. There are many persons whom we consider as
insignificant but their contributions are very significant.
In the above Bible
portion, we see the courage of two such insignificant women:
Shiphrah and Puah, midwives of Egypt who took a very significant
role which led to the freedom of Israelites. These two women were
the pioneers in freedom for Israelites. We find, both these
women had the fear of the Lord (v.17). It is the fear and
reverence towards God that gave the sensitivity of right from
wrong. They had the wisdom to differentiate. When they
got that discernment, they responded. The thought led them to act.
For just as the body, without the spirit, is dead, so also
faith without works is dead. (James 2:26) They had the
courage to stand against the decree, which was declared by the most
powerful person of the land. They stood for justice and did not
fear the consequences. They feared the Lord Almighty and they
never thought of the consequences. When we read further, we see
that this action of theirs brought the impact after eighty long
years. They spared Moses’s life who was the person who gave freedom
for Israelites from the bondage. Moses was eighty years when
he came back to Egypt as a leader to liberate his people.
There are many
unscrupulous things happening in and around us. Sometimes we don’t
have the discernment to understand it, or even if we have, we may
lack the courage to stand against it. Fear of the Lord gives
us the understanding to differentiate between right and wrong and
gives us courage to stand for the right.
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