Monday, March 1, 2021
The End of Our Story or
God’s Beginning
Of the Rest of Our Lives?
Genesis 37:14
So Israel said to Joseph, ‘Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock; and bring word back to me.’ So he sent him from the valley of Hebron.
Philippians 2:4
Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
Words of Grace For Today
Israel sends Joseph.
That begins Joseph’s story of betrayal, slavery, advancement, a woman’s false charges, jail, interpreting dreams, and rising to Pharaoh’s most senior man … able then to rescue his family (including the brothers who betrayed him) from famine, which then results in Joseph’s descendants being enslaved by the Egyptians and God’s delivering the people, bringing them into the Promised Land. This story of deliverance will be retold generation after generation as the basis of God’s relationship with God’s chosen people.
When we think that our enemies have done us in, God uses all circumstances (especially our great disaster) to bring about witness and long-lived stories of God’s Graceful Deliverance of so many people.
God’s guide for us comes in many various words and ways. Paul relates a few of them to the Philippians: Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
Let us live wondrously filled with trust in God’s deliverance, for God walks with us through all circumstances. We need not look after our own interests. We receive life and breath that we may look after others’ interests.