One of my prayers as a parent has been that God would consistently intersect the lives of my children with people who would point them toward his will for their lives. I pray for people who can say things to them that they will hear and receive in a way they may not hear and receive from me. God has been faithful to answer this prayer over and over again.

I do not know all of the divine encounters my children have experienced, but I remember one well. My son graduated from high school, and after a year of college we received a call from him with these words, “I feel like I am wasting my time and your money.” Grateful for his honesty, but concerned for his lack of focus, my husband and I began to pray in earnest for God to direct him. For over a year, he did some traveling, and then got a job doing manual labor at barely minimum wage. He worked with an older man who one day looked at him and said, “Son, do you want to be doing what I’m doing when you’re my age?” My son responded, “With all due respect, no sir.” The man said, “Then you need to get yourself back in school and start working toward a future.” Soon after this conversation, my son returned to college and today is a successful middle school principal. I smile when I think of him today. Perhaps he is the answer to another parent’s prayer as he intersects the lives of young people.

My husband’s experience as a military chaplain serving with a basic training unit convinced him that God often uses drill sergeants to get young men and women back on the right track in life. After observing many physical, mental, and spiritual transformations of new recruits, he came to the conclusion that the drill sergeants were the catalysts for change, but the agent of change in a recruit was the Spirit of God moving in response to the prayers of families and churches back home.

I do not know if Jochebed prayed that someone would intersect her son’s life, but it happened. Just as God orchestrated the events of Pharaoh’s daughter bathing in the Nile River to influence the future of Moses, I believe God orchestrated the circumstances surrounding my son’s working with a man who influenced his future. In God’s great irony, the river that meant death and sorrow for Hebrew infants brought life and hope for Moses. In that river, a mother’s prayer and God’s mercy intersected.