When the Plan Comes Together
As soon as Joseph appeared before him, he threw his arms around his father and wept for a long time. Then Joseph said to his brothers and to his father’s household, “I will go up and speak to Pharaoh and will say to him, ‘My brothers and my father’s household, who were living in the land of Canaan, have come to me. The men are shepherds; they tend livestock, and they have brought along their flocks and herds and everything they own.’ When Pharaoh calls you in and asks, ‘What is your occupation?’ you should answer, ‘Your servants have tended livestock from our boyhood on, just as our fathers did.’ Then you will be allowed to settle in the region of Goshen, for all shepherds are detestable to the Egyptians.”
Genesis 46:29, 31-34 (NIV)

As the tears of reunion flow, Joseph’s heart overflows with awe and reverence for the God of his fathers who had orchestrated all of this divine convergence of human destiny. And in that one sacred embrace, Joseph beheld the mystery of God’s unfathomable grace, which transformed this suffering into a vessel of salvation for his family and the fulfillment of divine promises.

When the storms settle and the suffering ceases and the pain subsides, the blurriness gives way to some clarity that so much of our spiritual growth is developed in the context of our suffering.

How do you respond to life when there’s no more battle to fight? When things have changed for the better and it has finally worked out for your good—when what you have waited for is now upon you, can you take off your fatigues, put down your weapon, and enjoy that the sun is now shining? How do you live then? What is the proper spiritual posture when the plan works, when the blessing has arrived, and when the season has changed?

Joseph teaches us in this text that faith in God is not just response and reaction. Surrender and offering faith is also a thinking matter. Joseph has this deep emotional response to the first embrace of his father Jacob. He hasn’t seen him in more than two decades, and his response is visceral. It is deep. Joseph has been holding on to these emotions for a long time and the text is emphatically descriptive when it tells how he hugs the old man Jacob and weeps for a long time. But then he immediately switches emotions, turns to the others, and says, “We have to exact the plan.”

You can’t stay in your emotions so long that you forget that your faith employs a strategy. Do you see how quickly Joseph goes from emotional gratitude and appreciation to God for sparing the life of his father into action? It’s a flooding of pent-up emotions. He’s weeping so long that the writer needed to make mention of it. But that emotional display did not dissipate the mission that was in front of him. Joseph has enough spiritual maturation to know that faith expressed must be wed to faith strategically moving within the extended blessings of God.