Genesis 50:15-21: When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, what if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him? So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left his instructions before he died: “This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly. Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept. His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. “We are your slaves,” they said. But Joseph said to them,“Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.
Joesph saved his family. He gave his people the chance to become a great nation. We each have the opportunity to save our people, to enable our future generations to fulfill their destiny. We cannot envision how our own puny life might save a generation of people or enable them to achieve some prosperous outcome, but neither could Joseph when he was in the pit his brothers had thrown him in or when he sat imprisoned on false charges of seducing Potiphar’s wife. Life can look pretty bleak at times with no hope for our own future, let alone our future progeny.
Yet Jesus told his disciples to pray for a future when God’s will would be done on earth, just like it is in heaven. He was telling us that God’s plan is for his people, all humans, to bring about a world that emulates heaven, with His help. That is why Jesus told us to pray for God to forgive us when we mess up, to ask God to guide us and protect us. We are created to fulfill God’s destiny of creating heaven on earth. We don’t have a passive role, just waiting for Christ’s return, just waiting to be swept from this sin-ridden world into the peaceful bliss of heaven. No, we were created as God’s agents, his stewards and caretakers of this world, to make it into paradise, God’s garden spot where He can walk with us and take pleasure in our company. He made us to be co-creators with him.
But we are not being very good followers. We are destroying the earth in our unbridled greed and killing one another because we are competing for resources under the belief that God limited our resources at the same time he gave us insatiable appetite and ambition. There is evil in the world; Jesus told us to pray to God to be delivered from it. But Jesus clearly tells us we are to live lives of abundance, not scarcity; he tells us that God’s victory over evil is assured. Jesus invites us to have complete and peaceful lives by following his example, not troubled lives cut off or cut short by violent conflict or starvation.
We must see the story we were created to live out. If we believe we were meant to fight and kill each other in order to satisfy our appetite for always more, more, more, we will continue to live a dog-eat-dog existence, seeing our neighbor not as a brother or sister to be loved, but as a competitor, an enemy to kept out, oppressed, or killed. God created us to love one another, to be co-creators with Him, to live as one body, loving and sharing our gifts to achieve a peaceful, abundant, prosperous world. If we can’t imagine that world, we will not work for it. We will go on believing that life is, and was always meant to be, a downward progression toward “last man standing”.
The church is the Bride of Christ, meant to be the model for living together in harmony, caring for everyone as brother and sister, loving each other as God loves us. If you can’t believe this story, if you can’t live for this purpose, God’s purpose, then you aren’t creating the future that God created you to create. Instead of serving God’s purpose, you are working against Him. The more of us that see this story and share this story with others, the more of us that will work together in love, living in abundance, serving God and achieving His vision of heaven on earth. Catch that vision, see it, and live your life in that story.
With peace and healing,
Doug