hands pressed, bent, and then turned the split reed hard in upon itself. Carefully – so carefully that her fingers were numbed from the fierce pressure – she applied each tight turn and weave as her hands hurried. It was round – as baskets were – but not quite... She bent it longer, pressing and pulling hard on the weave. It must fit. It must be right!

No basket she had ever made was so important to her. It must be shaped to its mission. Her hands brought each prepared reed into submission to its heart-aching purpose. With fingers aching from strain, she slowly and carefully tightened each piece. It was her altar, her offering. What more could she do?

In her heart it really was for – Him; the god of her ancestors. There would be no mercy for her family from Pharaoh. But perhaps – God, the god of their great fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob...?

Her pain was terrible! It cut her. Had Abraham felt like this? The Most High saved young Isaac from the knife. But she – she was nothing – no patriarch, no leader, not even a man. She was alone in her heart-break. Her stomach ached with fierce grief.

hot pitch was ready. She had haggled in the market for as much as she could get. The merchant tried to exploit her desperation. But the grim determination that he had met with soon made him almost generous. Now, every hot drop was pressed into the fibre, layer upon layer, inside and out, smoothed, hard ...ready.

The lid fitted snugly on the basket lip. It would keep the burning sun from him. Her mind held his face. Oh, his trusting eyes, his alert face, his smooth skin, soft, tender, vulnerable! She moved into the cool of the house. Picking him up, she wept as she put him to her breast for his last feed and felt the need in his little mouth.

he slept, and she folded her best cloth into the basket for his bed. 

Would the River be cruel to him? As, by the king's word, it had already taken so many boy-children? Or, would the Most High...?

feared to complete the thought in her mind. Would her God, the god of Abraham, do it – again – and for a woman; a woman who already had other children. 

Would He accept her desperate faith?

iriam wiped her mother's wet cheeks as the lid closed on the baby's sleeping face.

3-Days of Pain

Moses' Depression

Wisdom's Walk

Copyright © Lloyd Thomas 1997-2011. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
Feel free to copy, as long as this full copyright notice is included.

Victorian Initials by Harlan Wallach.