Genesis 45:7 But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
There are some moments that are so saturated with the undeserved lovingkindness of the LORD that they shock us in their abundant generosity. We don’t see them very often, or ever in our lives. Our world, and us personally, have too often been too focused on me and mine, and not enough you others. We see the world as a world of scarcity and want.
To fix this, it would be easy to just take all the wealth of the rich everywhere and redistribute it across the population of the whole world. Lower the top down to the bottom, and then raise everyone to the same level. Regardless of effort or motivation, everyone gets paid the same.
But those in societies with special skills have always been able to gain more wealth than others. Often those skills have been applied for selfish ends. Like the railroad magnates of previous centuries, wealth tends to become concentrated. The tech sector has become that center of wealth in our time.
But kindness, generosity, and grace move in the opposite direction. Our text shows a moment in our story when the one who has borne the cost of deliverance tells about the deliverance to come. Joseph has a history of bearing the weight of his brothers poor decisions and hatred.
His brothers have sold him as a slave. Check. They staged a wild animal attack. Check. They conspired to hide the truth from their father. Check. They continued in that lie for several years, even in the face of their father’s great grief and pain. Check.
They didn’t deserve kindness. They deserved to have the truth revealed and Joseph to be vindicated. They deserved to feel the guilt of their actions before their father. And rightly so, they deserved to grovel before Joseph to whom they had been so unjust. But that isn’t what happens.
Instead, somehow in that moment, Joseph expresses the clarity that he had probably discovered long before his brothers had arrived to purchase lifesaving food. Joseph had learned to trust the LORD. He didn’t consider the circumstances to be the Lord of his life. He had learned to yield.
So in the moment when he reveals himself to his brothers, the underserved lovingkindness of the God he had come to know came pouring out. The dream he had when he was just a lad had come true. His brothers had bowed before him.
And Joseph could see the Hand of God in what was going on. His time in prison now made sense. The timing of Pharaoh’s dreams made sense. And now the return of his brothers for more food made sense.
But it had come at a cost. Joseph had been forcibly separated from his family, in a foreign country as a slave. He had endured injustice. But at every turn the faithfulness of the LORD had shone through. It was the LORD whose hand was guiding and direct, but it had been Joseph who had carried the weight in his own body.
Do you hear a new perspective on life arising out of this story? People can be determined to use their power to mold and shape our lives, but it is the LORD who uses even their evil for His glory and our good. Israel was rescued because Joseph was enslaved.
So when you see what appears to be injustice in your life, take a new course. Begin to see beyond the circumstances and look for the hand of God. His hand is there. Look for it and see His deliverance.
The Arnold Journey 