Theme of the Week: Genesis
Bible Verse: And Joseph made the Israelites swear an oath and said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.” Genesis 50:25
Scripture Reading: Genesis 50:1-26
Fast forward the generations again. But the text doesn’t move as fast as we must. The text follows the family of promise in detail. We get to read of the successes and failures, and more failures . . . and more failures. But God keeps showing up and reminding them of His promise to Abraham. Until finally, through a series of unexpected twists and turns, one of the family is in Egypt saving the world from a famine. We are immediately called back to the promise given to Abram when we read that “the whole world came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph” (Genesis 41:57). Indeed, all the families of the world were blessed through Abraham’s family. Is this, finally, the realization of the promise given to Eve? Is Joseph the serpent crusher?
In Joseph’s story, we see so much of what God was promising. Family reunion, world blessing. Hope. But the story of Joseph comes to an odd and somewhat ominous close. Joseph, an old man who has “saved the world” from the famine, says that God will come to their aid. Aid from what? What troubles lay ahead? And he asks that when his family finally leaves Egypt, they take his bones with him.
They are not in the land God promised. This is not the end of the blessing or of the story. We see glimpses. We see events that mirror what God has promised but turn out not to be the promise itself.
God is playing a long game that those who are in it cannot see the end of. Even now, God is playing a long game. We know the ending, as Joesph knew the promise, but we do not know the time or what intervening events must occur. In the meantime, we wait, we trust, and we follow the paths laid out for us as Joseph and his ancestors did. We may not always like the roads down which we travel. They may not always be smooth. But they are the roads that lead from the promise to the promised land. And we, like Joseph, may die before we see it, but we can rest assured that our bones will be taken up into the land God has promised.
Prayer: God, your story is one of hope and intrigue. Thank you for writing it and for writing me into it. Help me to see that the roads you have laid before me require that I, like Joseph, must choose you and not my own way. Give me the strength and the courage to do so.
Reflection: Are you part of God’s story? If so, how are you telling it? If not, what is stopping you from becoming part of it?
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