OUR MESSINESS & GOD’S PROMISES
A Worship Reflection from Pastor Megan Torgerson
In Sunday’s sermon, Pastor Brandon covered a lot of ground. In the story of Joseph and his dysfunctional family from Genesis 37:3-8, 17b-22, 26-34 and 50:15-21, we got a huge Biblical history review. We had to move from last week’s story about Abraham all the way to Joseph, Abraham’s great-grandson. In all the sordid details of that extended family and their crises, we hear that God’s chosen people make some terrible choices.
The generations of history bring us to Joseph and his brothers. In Genesis 20:50, after years of isolation, oppression, imprisonment, and struggle, Joseph stands before his brothers (who set his life on that whole tragic path) and says: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as [God] is doing today.” Far from arguing that “all’s well that ends well” or “everything happens for a reason”, Joseph instead points out that God can use the most tattered, broken, bruised pieces of our lives and knit them together into something beautiful and life-giving.
In fact, as I learned from Pastor Brandon in his sermon, the very word Joseph uses, here translated intended, can be used to talk about the act of weaving. It’s the same word used way back in Genesis 15:6, when God reckoned Abram’s faith to him as righteousness. Just as God wove Abram’s trust into righteousness, so too could God weave Joseph’s history of betrayal and pain into a way for many people to find life.
I didn’t really realize how much I needed to hear that promise. Like so many of us, I’ve often found myself grumbling about what God is up to lately – lock downs and protests and distance learning and wildfires and murder hornets (remember those?) and so much stuff that just keeps piling up. I feel like I just gesture wildly around myself demanding, “God, what on earth are you up to, here?”
It helps to be reminded that God has promised to give us life and a future. God’s plans aren’t in the minutia, but in the big picture. God takes all the messes and mistakes and missteps and weaves them together into a fabric that covers us in hope, care, and love. God grieves the tragedies and trials in our lives just like we do. But because God is God and we are not, God can take this tangled mess and sort it into something beautiful and meaningful. In the twisted tale of Joseph and his dysfunctional family, we learn we’re not alone in our messiness and that God’s promises can still be trusted.
Let us pray:
God who gives the promise, we praise you that you stand with us when all seems lost. Hold me close as I discern how to move forward in all of life’s struggles. Give me what I need to make it through so I can keep pointing others to the gift of Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord. Amen.