Pondering a Hard Truth

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his other children because Joseph had been born to him in his old age.  So one day Jacob had a special gift made for Joseph—a beautiful robe.  But his brothers hated Joseph because their father loved him more than the rest of them.  They couldn’t say a kind word to him.  One night Joseph had a dream, and when he told his brothers about it, they hated him more than ever.  “Listen to this dream,” he said.  “We were out in the field, tying up bundles of grain.  Suddenly my bundle stood up, and your bundles all gathered around and bowed low before mine!”  His brothers responded, “So you think you will be our king, do you?  Do you actually think you will reign over us?”  And they hated him all the more because of his dreams and the way he talked about them.  Soon Joseph had another dream, and again he told his brothers about it.  “Listen, I have had another dream,” he said.  “The sun, moon, and eleven stars bowed low before me!”  This time he told the dream to his father as well as to his brothers, but his father scolded him.  “What kind of dream is that?” he asked.  “Will your mother and I and your brothers actually come and bow to the ground before you?”  But while his brothers were jealous of Joseph, his father wondered what the dreams meant.  

Genesis 37:3-11

Truth is impartial to what we think of it; truth is simply (and most profoundly) its own reality.  One, plus one more, does not care if you think the answer is seven; it will always be as reality demands…two.  The difference between Jacob and his older sons was that Jacob entertained the possibility of truth told him by his youngest son, a truth which Joseph’s elder brothers refused to acknowledge.  This truth was what Joseph was given in a dream, concerning the future, when his older brother’s hatred of their youngest sibling would come full cycle.  Eventually the brothers, and even their father, would be dependent on Joseph’s forgiveness.

The story of Joseph’s jealous brothers selling their young sibling into slavery, and his subsequent rise to power in Egypt, followed by a famine, and his brothers being sent to find food, is a harbinger of God’s advent.  The birth of Christ, and the dream (even of Jesus’ disciples) of a political Messiah, sold for thirty pieces of silver to the cross, is the fulfillment of Joseph’s hard life with its ultimate victory, punctuated at last by his magnanimous forgiveness of the ones who persecuted him.  It is a resurrection truth, hard to entertain, but sweet to the reins when digested fully.

The truth of Joseph’s, and Jesus’ lives is hard to entertain.  Our world is always looking for easier shortcuts…computers that do better math than counting on our fingers…machines to do the heavy lifting…gene-splitting to make better human bodies, prettier, stronger, more able to cope with the harshness of life and our darker realities.  Somehow our notion of “truth” carries the lie that we are bound to create our own reality, sans God.  In some self-aggrandizing common consent, humanity has made God obsolete.  And that is the shroud they put on the face of a dead savior Friday afternoon.  It didn’t ring true Sunday morning.

For You Today  

Jacob wasn’t thrilled about Joseph’s second dream, because it meant a reversal of the order…the father bowing-down to the son.  But he left a little flap of wonder hanging for the wind of revelation to let in some light.

That is what Advent brings…revelation.  Let the wind blow today.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

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There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

   Seven Deadly Sins - Part 3 - Envy   and   When Envy Grabs a Heart

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Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©