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.

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭50‬:‭19‬-‭21‬ ‭NIV‬‬

They say all’s well that ends well.

After the long and protracted drama of Joseph and his brothers, the story ends with a perspective keen in hindsight, forgiveness, and reunification of the entire family.

But it’s not every story that has a happy ending.

In fact, for so many of us at this time of year, our prayers continue to seek and find those loved ones who may be left behind at the Lord’s return.

Do not abandon your hopes and desires. Set a place at your table readied for the return of the prodigals and the lost who still don’t understand that they need Jesus.

Be ready for a miracle.

Successful at everything…

When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned.

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭39‬:‭3‬-‭4‬ ‭NIV‬‬

And handsome, too.

Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭39‬:‭6‬-‭7‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Some guys have it all. Fortune, fame, women…the perfect man.

The envy of every guy, Joseph had mad skills in everything he did, the trust of his boss, and sex appeal to boot.

And to top it off, incomparable virtue and morals.

I’ve encountered a few of these incredible men in my life. And I mean incredible literally in that it’s hard to believe one man can have the whole package the rest of us only aspire to piecemeal.

Tempering my envy is a truth and conviction that despite what it may seem, no man has it all. No man is perfect except Jesus.

Being enamored with the traits of another isn’t a bad thing except when you misplace your personal standards within them.

Someone out there right now mistakenly views you as the perfect person. It may be hard to believe but it’s true.

The standards we hold and ascribe to are relative and even more importantly, they are reflective of our own shortcomings.

Our standard is to be more like Jesus in every way. One perfect man, one perfect life.

Don’t ever lose sight of this. Your value lies in who you are on your journey right now.

So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭37‬:‭28‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Jealousy drives people to do crazy stuff to vanquish what they view as competition.

Ironically, jealousy says more about you than the object of your jealousy itself.

To admire and wish obsessively for something merely underscores your own nature of greed and discontent.

When not reigned in, jealousy starts bitter wars all based on the conviction you deserve something more or something better.

Humility is its opposite.

In fact, as sinners we deserve nothing but to be thankful for the generosity of God and his salvation.

But we are competitive by nature. The very nature we are to have abandoned as followers of Christ.

This week of Thanksgiving, let us not frustrate ourselves over who we aren’t or what we don’t have.

Be thankful of WHOSE we are and for what we possess as a result.

All the men who went out of the city gate agreed with Hamor and his son Shechem, and every male in the city was circumcised. Three days later, while all of them were still in pain, two of Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and attacked the unsuspecting city, killing every male.

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭34‬:‭24‬-‭25‬ ‭NIV‬‬

No good deed goes unpunished.

Kick ‘em when they’re down.

Haters are gonna hate.

Call it what you will but life isn’t fair and avengers are always at the door.

In this story, Dinah’s brothers successfully avenge the rape of their sister. It was an easy rout. A deceitful plan, but an effective one.

Standing up against evil is rarely this easy.

The takeaway?

There are no rules in war. It’s entirely about finding your advantage against your foe and exploiting it to your victory.

There will be times when being a Christian is less about being loving and more about being smarter than a fifth grader.

May it be that when I say to a young woman, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’—let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭24‬:‭14‬ ‭NIV‬‬

There’ve been times I’ve been so desperate to clearly hear the voice of God that even a “No” would have sufficed.

Here is Isaac’s servant wanting to please his master by making the correct choice on his behalf of a wife for him. His prayer seeks to put the odds in his favor, not leaving such an important decision to chance.

We’ve all been there, rolling the dice in hope of making the right choice. It’s a gut wrenching act. If it turns out good, praise be to God. If not, what went wrong?

We trust God to enlighten us in our blind spots and move in faith hoping for the outcome.

Outcomes are overrated.

God rewards trust and faithfulness in ways beyond our comprehension. He sees the big picture when we do not.

While that may sound a lot like bad preaching that offers no real solution to the equation, we can’t command a favorable response of God’s without regarding an unfavorable one as any less divine.

Here is Rebekah; take her and go, and let her become the wife of your master’s son, as the Lord has directed.

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭24‬:‭51‬ ‭NIV‬‬

For this servant it appears his strategy worked. But how many times do we beckon supernatural intervention then not accept the outcome?

Too many.

Call on the name of the Lord and trust he will not let you down. He is most honored when trust and faith combine to result in the outcome we need.

Do the right thing and trust God with the results.

If it is meant to be, let it be and rejoice in hearing the voice of God whether in a “yes” or in a “no.”

Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭22‬:‭2‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Abraham’s faith in and fear of God was at the very least unprecedented and at the very most a foreshadowing of God’s sacrifice of His own son Jesus.

Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭22‬:‭12‬ ‭NIV‬‬

‘Faith in and fear of’ is the radical center of passage for every believer.

Following God is all or nothing if it’s anything at all.

A half-hearted lukewarm commitment is no option yet remains as the central struggle for most of us these days.

As the world worsens and the end approaches, each of us will face our own Mt. Moriah challenge.

God wants your whole heart, mind, and soul.

‘Faith in and fear of’ is given of your own volition and God’s blessings follow.

Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭22‬:‭15‬-‭18‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Earnestly pray for your own Mt. Moriah summit.

A trial is God’s pop quiz to see how we are doing in the school of faith.

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭16‬:‭13‬ ‭NIV‬‬

God is an active presence in our lives and in this world.

Like stakes placed to mark a path, He provides nodal events and experiences to assure us He sees us along our journey.

8 billion people and He sees you, hears you, and makes the presence of his guidance real and evident to YOU.

When you seek Him, call him by the name given him by Hagar “The God who sees me” acknowledging the preexisting personal relationship which came the day you made your decision to follow.

Let your eyes meet in every prayer.

So Abram said to Lot, “Let’s not have any quarreling between you and me, or between your herders and mine, for we are close relatives. Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭13‬:‭8‬-‭9‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Thanksgiving. Where family gathers around the table for a lovely meal and an argument.

The holidays reconnect us with friends and relatives of all persuasions. While we are different, we share an inescapable bond of blood and treasured experiences you can never unfriend even if you try.

Not every different choice, perspective or point of view is worth a fight. You’re better than that.

Give thanks for the table set before you and the provision of people around it you can call family and friends in a world where so many are alone and without.

You are all invited guests at the Lord’s feast. Be exceedingly grateful for what you share, not disturbed with what you don’t.

Anger and argument can’t peacefully coexist within hearts that are truly thankful. 

Christmas scares me.

Not the holiday itself but that with each successive year, despite its ever earlier encroachment, it takes me progressively greater effort to summon the holiday spirit or conjure up a bright seasonal emotion which for decades seemed effortless.

Before Halloween has always been unreasonably out of the question, but before Thanksgiving they say, is now expected if you’re to enjoy the full magical value of the season even though half the country is still well over 75 degrees.

It’s a little scary when it takes this much work to be merry.

So I went to WalMart.

If anything says Christmas three months in advance, it’s WalMart, where eventually I found myself shopping retail for the best buy on holiday goods soon to be marked down.

Then I turned on the radio station.

As if I wasn’t snapping into the season quick enough, 24/7 carols sang their tunes, but then I questioned whether a song alone could or even should make such an instrumental shift in my attitude.

Over time, I tried several other near misses, disappointing myself at every turn. Baking, decorating, bad sweaters, none were capable of the transitional trick.

I once talked with my Mom about it and she shared with me some memories of earlier Christmastimes when the magic didn’t seem so difficult to come by.

I called my kids and chatted about it some and we laughed a little at remembering their first Santa Claus moments. But if I recall, it wasn’t until my son who was away at school at the time, said he was coming home for the holidays.

That was when I felt the change, much like that Grinch moment where in a heartbeat, he had encountered an obvious truth.
Christmas isn’t created by things and stuff and trappings. It’s inside people.

It’s our special stories, our humored histories and the secret gift searches we Google in talks with one another as the weather begins to change to hot chocolate and we all grow just a little bit closer.

Then suddenly one morning, that little something tips the scales just enough to conjure up the Spirit we sought all along.

And for the first time of the season, and certainly not the last, we utter our very first “Merry Christmas” to a stranger, and indeed, it had arrived.

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.”

‭‭Genesis‬ ‭6‬:5-7 NIV

The Mulligan.

When God takes a do-over, you know things are bad.

The human race, now endowed with the knowledge of good and evil, had chosen the latter one too many times and the penalty to come was a long wet eraser.

“But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.”

I can’t recall how many times I’ve regarded myself such a huge mistake that I should rightly be washed away.

But Noah.

Finding favor in the eyes of God is now my mission in life. Particularly because with repentance I now find forgiveness when I do fail and I know the flood was just a one-time thing.

God allows mulligans.

He is patient and forgiving, bestowing grace and mercy when they are unmerited. And that’s solely because Jesus death washed my sins away and his resurrected spirit lives in me and in you.

I’m not sure exactly what it was about Noah that was so favorable and redemptive but I do know I want to be on his boat watched over by the eyes of God.

Are you on board?

‘Cuz I Noah guy…