Monday, May 17, 2021
Since the Sun First Rose
To Shine Light on Us
We’ve Had Many Paths to Choose From.
Many Have Chosen Evil as Their Path.
God’s Blesses Us, Walking with Us
Guiding Us on Paths of Righteousness.
Genesis 39:23
The chief jailer paid no heed to anything that was in Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper.
1 Corinthians 3:6
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
Words of Grace For Today
When God chooses to work with us, things work out well for us.
Joseph is in jail not because he did anything wrong, but because Potiphar’s wife wanted to have sex with him, he refused, she falsely accused him of sexual assault, and he was quickly falsely convicted and jailed.
Not much has changed through the many, many generations. Women can too easily make false accusations of a man and have him falsely convicted and jailed. Happened to me. The worse part of that was everyone knew the reports, charges, testimony, and judge’s decisions were all made up of material lies, obvious lies. Without the lies brought to the courts and those made up by the court there could not have been any convictions. The real damage is not to me, as it was not to Joseph. The real damage is done to the children who were in my care who learned that lies win in court. The real damage is done to those who lied, for to lie about such things, and for courts to produce blatantly false decisions and convictions, costs those people a huge part of their soul, their spirit, their health and well-being, which like cancer grows until there is nothing good left in the person.
Joseph, as I was, is noticed as different, honourable and honest, by his jailer. He is put in charge of many things and trusted with them. God is with him, and it is obvious to those around him. It is not that Joseph or I or the many falsely jailed people through history with whom God has walked are perfect. It is that we are blessed, in many and various ways.
There is a wide stream of hubristic Christian theology and practice that takes the blessing of God’s people, the prospering of our work, the growth of God’s Kingdom around us, BUT it changes this from a blessing to a claim to control God’s Will: namely this heresy claims that those whom God chooses for eternal life (and the rest of humanity is damned eternally) can be seen to be so chosen because they prosper, and by prosper is meant they become wealthy on the backs of other people. This is not God’s blessings at work for them. This is the Devil’s perversion of blessing into curse: Goodness is measured in material wealth, power, or position.
God’s blessings come in many and various ways. God’s blessings sometimes come most fruitfully, most obviously, when one suffers the lack of material wealth, power, or position. This does not mean, as some have turned it around backwards again by the Devil’s wiles to pervert God’s blessing, that one has to be poor, powerless, or an outcast among the homeless or nation-less in order to be blessed.
Paul struggled against great odds to bring the Gospel to everyone, even those not Jewish, and in so many places around the northeast Mediterranean. The congregations that he helped develop were not made up of perfect, or even nice people. A quick read of the Letters to the Corinthians makes this obvious. Yet Paul’s missionary work prospered and was blessed by God. Through his work and many other developments in the flow of time Christianity has become a recognized religion for the last millennium and a half; which is not a perfect development either, marred as it is by as much scandal and war as not.
Still, we say with Paul of his work for Christ and of ours: We planted, others (Apollos) watered, but God gives the growth.
Because God walks with us, and gives growth so that in many and various ways things prosper, we can say Julian of Norwich, even when the world is ‘going to hell in a hand basket’ that all will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.