Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Our reading titled, God Had Other Plans, was written by Tim Gustafson.

Their precise ages are unknown.

One was found on the steps of a church.

The other knew only that she'd been raised by

nuns. Born in Poland during World War II for nearly 80 years, neither Helena nor Christina

knew about each other. Then, DNA test results revealed them to be sisters and led to a joyful reunion. It also revealed their

Jewish heritage, explaining why they'd been abandoned. Evil people had marked the girls for death,

simply because of their identity. Imagining a frightened mother, who leaves her threatened children where they might be rescued,

calls to mind the story of Moses. As a Hebrew baby boy, he was marked for genocide. His mother

strategically placed him in the Nile, giving him a chance for survival. God had a plan she couldn't have dreamed of

to rescue his people through Moses. The story of Moses points us to the story of Jesus. As Pharaoh had

sought the murder of Hebrew boys, Herod ordered the slaughter of all the baby boys in Bethlehem.

Behind all such hatred, especially against children, is our enemy, the devil.

Such violence doesn't take God by surprise.

He had plans for Moses, and he has plans for you and me.

And through his son, Jesus, he's revealed his biggest plan to rescue and restore those

who once were his enemies.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Exodus chapter 2 verses 1 through 10.

Now, a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave

birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.

But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and

...