“Why me?” was the question that haunted every waking moment for Liz, the mother of Kristen, a three month old baby diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Liz spoke on WEEI’s Jimmy Fund Telethon on Friday. I think a lot of cars had to pull over as she told her story. I know I did.

It all started with what Liz thought was a scratch on Kristen’s eye, something any baby could do to herself. But before she knew it they had gone from pediatrician to eye specialist to Children’s Hospital to Dana Farber, from what they thought was a minor scratch to what they hoped was a benign tumor to what they discovered was a potentially lethal malignant growth requiring chemotherapy and radiation. In a few short weeks it had gone from a minor inconvenience to confidently moving through what was to be routine surgery to the surreal nightmare of mentally planning her child’s funeral, and then on to that first appointment at the Jimmy Fund clinic at Dana Farber, which hardly starts auspiciously. There is a cute young boy there with them, fresh from some treatment or another, cuddling in his father’s arms, who suddenly vomits all over his father’s chest.

“Why me?”, Liz thinks, over and over again, day after day, until one day, it comes to her: “Why not me?” Why think that somehow I should be exempt from the ills and suffering of this world? And, why me? -- maybe me because I’m the mom who is going to help get us through all this; maybe me because I’m the mom who is going to always be there for her child; maybe me because I’m the mom who is going to suck it up and fight this thing like it has never been fought before.

Shiprah and Puah, tempted to wail “Why me?” in the face of the predicament Pharaoh has placed them in, in their actions echo Liz’ response, “Why not me?!”. Maybe, like Esther, another Hebrew woman of faith long after, they had come to a king’s attention for just such a time as this. Maybe they had come to this particular place and time and occasion to use all their God-given gifts and talents and experience, their intelligence and wisdom and craft and bravery, to save not just baby boys, but an entire race.

And so these two women of little seeming consequence, who knew and respected and had faith in their God, find that they have been granted the ability to summon up the courage to disobey Pharaoh, and when called on the carpet by him to account for their failure to make a go of his genocidal plans, find that they are up to the task. What they do is concoct a story that plays off Pharaoh’s racial prejudices, racial prejudices which are, of course, at the root of his scheme to rid Egypt of these immigrants. The problem, they tell Pharaoh, is that while Egyptian women are slim and delicate and beautiful, and not muscular at all, since they are of course waited on hand and foot as befits such a noble race, they need the help of midwives to deliver their young. But the Hebrew women, because they work all the time, are so strong that they have their babies even before the midwives can get there.

Shiprah and Puah and Liz, they all “the right stuff”, the courage to stand up for what was right even in the face of the most daunting of circumstances. Moses’ sister was cut from the same cloth. His mother, you will recall, had hid Moses until he was three months old, and then realized that at some point this growing boy would be discovered, and so she concocted a plan to float Moses in a little ark of salvation on the Nile, right under the nose of Pharaoh’s daughter, in the hope something miraculous would happen. Pharaoh’s daughter falls for it hook, line and sinker, seeing the crying baby, and having pity on him. But it takes more to seal the deal than pity – there are practical consequences to picking up a baby out of the Nile. Anyone who has ever had a pet knows this – bringing home the puppy is only the start, but how do you feed it, care for it? The practicalities can be overwhelming, even more so if you are thinking of plucking a child up out of the Nile.

Up steps Moses’ sister, boldly walking right up to Pharaoh’s daughter, past all her attendants and eunuchs and court. Picture your daughter walking right past the Secret Service agents to speak directly to Jenna Bush. And, in a sentence, she ensures the survival of her brother, the one who some day will be used by God to bring the Hebrew people up out of captivity in Egypt: “Do you want me to go and get a nursing mother from the Hebrews so she can nurse the baby for you?” The light bulb goes on, Pharaoh’s daughter realizes that the practicalities of this adoption have been taken care of, and so of course she adopts little Moses, and unwittingly hires Moses’ birth-mother to care for him – whom she pays to boot!

There may be times in our lives where we, like Shiprah and Puah and Moses’ sister, will find ourselves called to courageous action that will affect many people, that may some day be written in the annals of our people, that will become the stuff of stories passed down from generation to generation. I am thinking here, if only off the top of my head, of those members of the congregation who went up to the State House this past spring to push for more support for foster parents, who a couple years ago went to Beacon Hill in support of marriage equality, who six years ago bravely took heaps of abuse for standing down by the Airport Rotary seeking support to stave off a war of choice in Iraq.

But there will be many, many more times in our lives where we, like Liz, the mother of little Kristen, will find ourselves called to courageous action on a much more mundane level.

Courage is what the teenager, ready to go off to college for the first time, needs as she anxiously contemplates leaving the nest for the first time, moving in with a complete stranger, finding herself in an alien environment among thousands of people she does not know. Courage is what the bereaved spouse needs, facing life without their helpmate of a half-century, contemplating the move from the comfort and certainty and memories of a single-family home to a retirement village or an assisted living facility.

Courage is what the struggling entrepreneur needs, as he contemplates another six months of long days and endless nights, scrambling for financing and customers and attempts to meet the payroll, hoping the product can be finalized and investors lined-up, aware of the constant toll this all takes on his spouse, his family, and even his health.

Courage is what the stay at home mother needs, sending her last child off to school, and wondering what life holds for her now, what will occupy the hours and days previously devoted to that so very important career of caring for the rising generation, how she will discern the next step in her life’s journey.

A character in a book I read over the summer defined courage this way: “Courage is the ability to be braver than the person standing next to you for an extra three minutes.” I like that definition – it is short, practical and useable.

And yet, truth be told, I often find it hard to be courageous as long as the person next to me, much less for three minutes longer! Despite my somewhat checkered background in the law, I don’t like conflict, I’m not big on putting my neck out, I don’t relish being the nail that sticks out so much it just asks to be hammered. My problem, by nature, is not being braver for three minutes, it is being brave at all. And so I think I like better, and find even more useable, the definition of courage brought to us in the lives of Shiprah and Puah and Liz of the inadvertent Jimmy Fund fame. Because courage as portrayed there is not something that one is born with or that is or is not part of our fundamental nature, it is something that is of God. God’s hands are all over the short account of the Hebrew midwives and the miraculous adoption of Moses, as indeed they are all over the Book of Exodus as a whole. It is not by accident or inadvertence that Moses is safe-guarded and the people are saved, but because of the involvement of God in the life of the people. As one author puts it, “The oppressive hand of Pharaoh may be strong, but the redemptive hand of God is stronger still.”

Courage, courage that we can rely on, that will endure, that will see us through whatever challenges come our way, is rooted in a faith that if God is for us, who can stand against us? That courage rests on the bedrock of the one who came to us, lived among, died for us, and rose again that we might rise also, Jesus Christ. That courage is rooted in the belief that, as Paul the Apostle assures us, “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That courage is sustained by the hope we share in God, by the partnership we share with God, whose character is marked by a faithful, steadfast, enduring love for us, now and forevermore.

In times of trouble, when we look up into the hills and see trouble all around, when we are tempted to say, “Why me?”, we can remember that our help, now and always, is in the Lord. And have courage. And have courage.