An unbridgeable distance

Some Torah for Devorah (but everyone should pay attention).

[Pharaoh's daughter] saw the box among the rushes, and she sent her maid ("ammatah") to fetch it (2:5)

Talmud; Rashi

Another interpretation of this verse renders the Hebrew word ammatah as "her arm" rather than "her maid." Ammatah also means "arm lengths." This is to teach us that "her arm was extended for many arm-lengths" (to enable her to reach the basket).

The Lubavitcher Rebbe

If Moses' basket lay beyond her reach, why did Pharaoh's daughter extend her arm? Could she possibly have anticipated the miracle that her hand would be "extended for many arm-lengths"?

There is a profound lesson here for each and every one of us. Often, we are confronted with a situation that is beyond our capacity to rectify. Someone or something is crying out for our help, but there is nothing we can do: by all natural criteria, the matter is simply beyond our reach. So we resign ourselves to inactivity, reasoning that the little we can do won't change matters anyway.

But Pharaoh's daughter heard a child's cry and extended her arm. An unbridgeable distance lay between her and the basket containing the weeping infant, making her action seem utterly pointless. But because she did the maximum of which she was capable, she achieved the impossible. Because she extended her arm, G-d extended its reach, enabling her to save a life and raise the greatest human being ever to walk the face of the earth.

Because she extended her arm, G-d extended its reach...