Threads

Scripture Reference: Genesis, Chapter 37

As we read our text, we see plainly that Joseph is Jacob’s favorite son. This is not Joseph’s fault. However, this favored place will influence the events that follow. Joseph’s dreams, fancy attire, and all those implied ‘ornaments’ of specialness prove to be more than his eleven brothers can stomach. Genesis 37:11 states that Joseph’s brothers were jealous of him. If the elder brothers’ feelings were merely pangs of unmet desire, comparisons, and the gnawing ‘sub-par’ and shadowing doubts they still needed therapy and healing in their self-value. Amidst this brewing resentment, suddenly, one day, Jacob sends Joseph to find his brothers who are tending their father’s sheep.

Jacob believed his sons were in Shechem. Joseph is wandering in some nameless fields and a passerby he asks tells him that his brothers are in Dothan. As Joseph approaches his brothers, in those final moments before he joins them, his brothers plot how to kill Joseph. Joseph is summarily stripped of his ornate cloak and tossed into an empty cistern. The eleven brothers sit down to lunch. Calm as you please. One of them looks up and sees a caravan of Ishmaelites, their cousins, journeying somewhere. Someone finds out the caravan is headed into Egypt. Judah interjects, ‘Let’s not kill him but sell him to the Midianites instead.’ Joseph is sold and carted off to Egypt.

From a cozy, re-run, or syndicated familiarity we may not easily see a vital truth. We have these events written neatly in scripture. We have probably heard about these events and how they culminate in Israel’s children crossing the Red Sea in joyful liberation and triumph. As I look today my eyes are drawn to the subtle undercurrent.

GOD is at work here. Like the backside of embroidery, cross-stitch, or tapestry the threads that are unseen intersect, overlap, and meander. Before Joseph ever dreamed, he was already the favorite son whose special attentions were irksome to his brothers. No doubt, the older brothers felt diminished, marginalized, and varying shades of inadequacy. The best any of them could hope for was jostling for favors and dim praise from their father.

In our text, Joseph’s brothers were in Shechem and then Dothan. Jacob didn’t know precisely where his sons were but this day GOD’s plan was enacted by Joseph’s errand, meeting his brothers, and their subsequent hand-off of Joseph to the traveling Ishmaelites. It seems that those travelers could have been anyone going anywhere. What if ‘lunch time’ and the casual ‘looked up’ had happened differently? These events, though they seem arbitrary, are synchronistic choreographed and designed by GOD.

Just now I thought of the situations of my life. Today, the phrase ‘limbo in time’ and questions like, ‘What is next?’ float about like dust mites and rays of sun through the parted window shades. The refuge for my mind is to understand and repeatedly reiterate: ‘JESUS is LORD of all of my life.” JESUS pre-made and pro-visioned every moment you and I will ever know. JESUS does not lurk in misty eternity with casual scant glances in our vicinity without care or compassion. JESUS is fully present, loving, and actively involved in our lives.

As I quiet myself as a weaned child, I can hear the faint sounds of needle pricking taut fabric. The clean slow steady drag of a length of thread coursing through the tiniest needle prick. The rustle of adjusting canvas and a metallic snip after an anchoring knot.

Our eyes cannot see the weaving threads behind or the front facing beauty being created but we can know GOD is creating a masterpiece and we are part of HIS design.

Feel free to shine,

 

One Light

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