Day #15: Genesis 43-45. "Joseph and His Brothers"

While the presence of Joseph will ultimately mean salvation (from famine) for his brothers and their family, it also brings them into confrontation with the one whom they betrayed and sold into slavery years earlier.  The story plays out at a fairly slow rate at this section and allows the drama to build.  Joseph tests them.  I don’t believe that he is torturing them, but offering them an opportunity for growth and for relational redemption.  At the climactic moment, Judah offers his life in the place of Benjamin for the sake of his father’s heart.  “Now therefore, please let your servant (Judah) remain instead of the boy.”  Joseph is moved to tears by this encounter, and extends extraordinary mercy to his former oppressors.  In both instances (Judah and Joseph) mercy leads to fullness of life. 

Reflect: What broken relationships cast shadows over your life?  How might the Lord be leading you to extend mercy in the midst of them?

Connect:  The theme of forgiveness finds its greatest and most expansive form in the NT as a reflection of the mercy of God revealed in Christ. 

Colossians 3:12-14  Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.