…but God! –with His People
“…and the Lord was with him.” (Genesis 39:2-3, 22-23)
Last week we left Joseph’s story noting father Jacob’s inconsolable grief contrasted with the evidence of an active heavenly Father.
What makes this grief so tragic though it was so real for Jacob is that it was so wide of the mark. He was mistaken, as we so often are. We need to remember that what we may think is reality may only be part of the story, or even a complete fabrication. That doesn’t mean that we should distrust what we are told or even what we see, what ti means is that we should be humble enough to know that we may not know it all or understand what we do know correctly – let alone to presume that we know all that God knows or what God is doing.
In fact what compounds his grief, bringing an unnecessary depth to it, is that Jacob failed to submit his grief to God by considering it in the light of God’s providential care and sovereign purposes for the children he loves. He neither remembered God nor looked to God. But God remembered Jacob even as He remembered Joseph. That God does not always fill in the dots of His activity for us does not alter the fact that He is at work for us – and there are many times we are confronted by the mystery of God’s providence but we should not dismiss its reality, purposefulness and gracious wisdom.
Here is where comfort is to be found, and it is not in having all the information nor in being able to rightly process that information by coming to valid conclusions about what is happening and why – no, it is in knowing the presence of God and knowing this, that He is aware of it all, including how we are grappling with what we are facing, and who is sovereignly in control of the broader picture as well as a the minute details, who is good and does all this righteously and well.
It is this that enables us to place even our grief as well as the unknowns into His hands, and to get on even with exposed weakness with the work that He has placed into our hands – doing so with (and perhaps at times desperate) dependence upon God’s grace.
And that is what we see in Joseph as we turn to Genesis 39 and hear the repeated anthem of promised grace “…and the Lord was with him.”