Moses and the divine word to ‘infant killers’

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Feelings of trepidation surged through my body upon reading the Gleaner article, ‘Baby Moses still in hospital’. Her rescue, not from a high of grass strands upon the Nile River, but from the low of a pit latrine in Cox Piece, St Mary, still evoked the famous biblical story in Exodus 2:1-10 that has given rise to a character few have surpassed in greatness in the Old Testament.

Our antitypical story has it that the infant was dumped, allegedly by its mother, shortly after birth the previous day, not a week, much more three months. Notwithstanding, I asked myself, what could have invited greater mess than dumping a child in a pit latrine? Then, I thought, the mother could have aborted the child. Then my thought processes got all muddled as I tried to tease out this far-from-being-an-infant issue: had the mother aborted the child, not a gun would have probably been heard fired about it. Or even if the abortion were to have come to light, surely it would not have caught national attention. And then I reflected: this same child that has stirred so much commotion, isn’t this the same child some months ago in the mother’s womb? And by our very actions, are we almost all hypocritically saying, ceasing to care for Moses or killing her once she is in the mother’s womb is fine, but once out, it’s not. What a difference a few months make for us to make up our minds as to what is killing a child and what is not!

But, since all’s well that ends well, we rejoice that a life has been spared or, at least, still being weighed in the balance. The child, though so young, has been through hell and back, having escaped the Pharaoh-like hands of abortion and the deathly hollow of a pit latrine.

The whole saga begs the question: Inside and outside the womb, are we killing off our children, our future? Is this a divine intervention to take another introspective look, as a people, at the issues affecting our little ones?

Could this really be a prophetic message for our nation? For how the child survived a pit latrine must only be laid at the hands of God.

And could this child be destined for greatness, a legendary leader in the making?

Time alone, only time will tell.

Matthew Baker

Faculty of Education and

Liberal Studies

University of Technology