Joseph has finally been reunited with his conniving brothers. The famine Joseph predicted from Pharaoh’s dreams has reached his homeland and his brothers go to get grain. Unbeknownst to them, it’s Joseph who doles out the grain. After reuniting with his youngest brother Benjamin, and testing his brothers’ loyalty, he reveals himself to them. They are very remorseful, and rightly so. But Joseph assured them, do not be distressed or angry with yourself. Joseph attributes his perilous journey – being sold by his brothers, betrayed by his boss’s wife, jailed, and eventually freed – to God. God sent him before the brothers to save life.
Wow. That’s some faith and forgiveness. The accompanying reflection from Fredrick Buechner points out that this story is about more than how Israel was saved from famine and starvation. It’s about the how Joseph was saved. And not just his body. Yes, his body was unscathed, but so was his soul. After this horrible experience, he was left with a deep and abiding faith in God, and God’s ultimate goodness.
This morning, I’m thinking about faith, and how to walk through trials, without anger, or bitterness, but with a stronger sense of God’s faith-fullness. As a society, there’s all sorts of trials we’re going through right now: pandemic, racial and social tensions, unemployment, illness. Is this God’s plan? Was it God’s plan to send Joseph through his trials?
While I know God is all powerful, I also know God is a hands-off God, allowing humans to get into all sorts of scrapes. I’m not sure where I heard the analogy, but whoever it was likened God’s hands-off love to a mother allowing a child to practice riding a bike. There may be falls, and the mother grieves. But she allows that level of freedom.
I don’t think God’s plan was for Joseph to go through his hell, or for us to go through ours. But I guess I do believe that God had a plan for the saving of Israel, and when Joseph turned up in Egypt, the logistics of God’s plan came together.
In my life, I don’t think that God has smited my loved one with a persistent significant mental illness, because of anything she did or didn’t do. Or because of anything I did or didn’t do. But on my faith-filled days, I believe there’s something good that will come. On my less faith filled days, I wonder.
In my case, I don’t have a group of errant brothers to blame for my loved one’s troubles. I don’t have anyone to blame. I suppose I could go back far enough and find someone to blame. Extended family that behaved badly that could have created a predisposition for this illness. Friends or peers who behaved badly that could have accelerated the illness. But what good would that do? We are where we are, and at this point, I’d really like to understand the plan. But I suspect that won’t happen in the near future. And in the meantime, I hope that I have enough faith-filled days to hold out hope that God’s providential plan will happen.
Well said. Especially now when it is easy to assign blame and lament over the circumstances. But as in Joseph's and many of our own lives, we wind up into living into something that we could not have dreamed or imagines
ReplyDeleteBetter than we could have ever asked or imagined, right??
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