Appalachian Disciple

Recently, I reread the life of Joseph, and I am so challenged by his words to his brothers in chapters 45 and 50. By chapter 50, his father, Jacob, has finally died and been buried. Joseph’s ten brothers, guilty of betraying him so horribly, were sure the ax was now, finally, going to fall on them. They concocted a story along the lines of, “Hey, Dad wanted us to tell you to forgive us…” And they begged for that forgiveness. (Gen. 50:15-17) Joseph wept when he heard this.

Who knows why Joseph wept? Maybe he was remembering how that betrayal felt and all the years of servitude and imprisonment that followed it. Maybe he wept for the lost years with his father, now lost to him for good. Maybe he wept because, after 17 years of living safe and provided for in Egypt due to his generosity, his brothers still don’t trust him to have really forgiven them. Maybe he wept because of the absurd dysfunctionality of the whole scenario, and God’s goodness despite it. We can’t know all his mind, but we know his spoken words: “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” (50:19-20)

The sovereign intention of God is where Joseph lands and where he stands. Basically, he asserts that their human intentions weren’t really that relevant to the good outcome God brought about. Focusing on what God accomplished meant the forgiveness was a given. The evil against him was acknowledged, yes, but dismissed as having no real significance given the grander scheme of God. “’So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.’ Thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.” (50:21) If God’s point was to provide for the entire family of Israel, then that’s what Joseph is going to go right on doing. To turn back and take vengeance now would counter God’s good intention, and wouldn’t that be stupid? Joseph wasn’t stupid.

But I think we are, often, either in not acknowledging God’s sovereign hand at all, or seeing it but trying to hang onto our resentment on the side.

My father died 5 1/2 years ago, and my mourning of him has not been so much about missing the relationship we had, but grieving the one we never did have. Even before he died, I had picked this apart six-ways-to-Sunday in my mind and revisited forgiveness many times. We had a peaceful, if shallow, understanding of one another. Even still, when I see an especially doting father, read about one, or hear songs about the same, my heart aches. It just does, and I can’t stop it.

But enter the sovereign intention of God! A long time ago I realized how my lack of closeness to my earthly father created a void that God used to draw me to my heavenly One. I was a little girl when I first trusted Christ and started pouring my heart out to Him. I shared with Him what I would never have shared with my dad, who was largely gone or busy or uninterested. God’s constant availability and desire to hear me stood in stark contrast. And when I hit my teenage years, my ‘rebellion’ against my father was to draw even closer to the God my father spurned. I’m pretty sure that if my father had represented Christianity to me, I would have run the other way. But he didn’t, and God used that to bring me all in.

So the sweet, close relationship with Christ that I enjoy today went deeper, quicker, earlier than it may have in other circumstance, and I would not trade that for any other relationship. The enormity of the gain in Christ shrinks the loss until it is of no real account. I can say, “Yes, that hurt,” but let bitterness go. What craziness would it be to hold on to resentment over the very circumstances God hijacked to bring about a cherished outcome?

I am humbled, challenged and fascinated by Joseph’s ability to basically say, ‘Only what God intended matters, so I hold no resentment toward you.’ Because on those days when a Facebook post of some happy father-daughter pair makes my heart ache, the temptation to resentment is always there. Yet if what God brought from that lost relationship was my union with Him, and His making me more like Christ, then my giving in to resentment undermines His very purpose. Just like turning out Joseph’s brothers after Jacob’s death would have undermined the whole purpose of God in sending Joseph ahead to Egypt in the first place.

For Joseph, this perspective should have been all the more difficult, for while my father was not ill-intentioned toward me, his brothers meant only evil toward him. The wrong done to him was intended to hurt, intended to sever, intended to destroy. Yet even back in chapter 45, when Joseph first reveals himself to his dismayed brothers, he says, “…do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life…So it wasn’t you who sent me here, but God” (45:5,8, emphasis mine) He doesn’t even want them to feel bad about it! They sinned against him, but based on the sovereignty of God, Joseph has moved past it and now pleads with them to forgive themselves!

This, then, is what Joseph shows us about how to trust God: I forgive you, because God is in control, and I trust Him. Period. (What a perspective, since he’s thousands of years ahead of the New Covenant concept of forgiving completely because that’s how we’ve been forgiven in Christ!) Joseph’s perspective is so different from the take on forgiveness that I hear a lot of today — that I’m freeing myself from your toxicity by forgiving you. While that may also be true, does that angle not play up the toxicity, make my ‘freedom’ the focus, and play down the hand and glory of God? In Joseph’s view, his brothers’ ‘toxicity’ is neither here nor there. Their character and intentions do not matter. Only what God is doing matters. He is sovereign. He is trustworthy. He is good and does good. (Psalm 119:68) That’s where Joseph stood. That’s where he wanted his brothers to stand. God, help me stand there, too!

Note:  God did bring my dad to believe in Him, too, much later. I like to say that all of my best days with my dad are ahead of me, because who knows what kind of redeemed relationship we will have at the great restoration of all things?