Upside-Down Kingdom Tenet #462: Pain = Progress

Our family spent Thanksgiving yesterday out of doors. We ate a meal... together. Against the odds, in a world deeply shattered by the shadow of the corona virus, in a society that now mandates masks in almost any situation, we met together and ate and laughed and kicked a soccer ball and flew a drone and went back for seconds of mashed potatoes.

We didn't know that this would happen; we'd planned, like many did, for Zoom Thanksgiving (what I did with the other side of my family who lives at some distance). When the weather reports came in the day before, though, we decided to try it.

And what a blessing it was! Amid so much discouragement, this simple act of eating a meal together was a ray of hope in the darkness. Isaiah 43:18-19 went through my mind: "Forget the former things and do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland."

An old song I learned in church many years ago is stuck in my head this morning: "God will make a way when there seems to be no way. He works in ways we cannot see; He will make a way for me."

One of my favorite camp games I played both as a camper and as a counselor was a trust-building activity where you partnered up with another person, and one member of each pair was given a blindfold. All the blindfolded people had to line up, and their partners had to stand opposite them at some distance. Once the game began, the "seeing" partner had to call for the "blind" partner, and following the sound of the seeing partner's voice -- amid the chaos of shouts and calls and whistles -- the blind partner had to find their way across the distance to their teammate. 

Sometimes, to make things interesting, the rec director would place "obstacles" in the middle, and the seeing partner had to guide their blind counterpart around that maze of obstacles. I was usually a participant, but now and then, I got to sit on the sidelines and observe, which brought its own rich reflections. 

It turns out that there are two types of participants in this game: 

1.) The good listeners: These are the ones who pick out their partner's voice and trust the forthcoming instructions, and they fairly easily navigate the obstacles. They walk slowly but steadily. They rarely pause for long. Their partners are excellent communicators. With clarity, they call their instructions. "Take three long steps forward and stop. Now turn to your right. Two steps. Pause." Etc. 

2.) The challenged listeners: These are the ones who panic. They freeze in the chaos, and even with their partners shouting across the distance at them, they can't move. They're paralyzed in their indecision and the surrounding chaos. Their frustrated partners struggle to keep their communication clear as they convey their instructions in a manner that will penetrate their partner's fear of stepping forward. 

An interesting mesh of trust and discipline interweaves in this game: The blind partner needs to trust their seeing partner in order to move forward, and the seeing partner must gently instruct their blind counterpart. Sometimes, if that blind counterpart is wandering the wrong way, more decisive words or stronger actions must be issued. "No! Stop!" And sometimes the frustration leaks through and everyone can see the effects. In the end, the rec director usually reminds us: "It's just a game." ;)

In Genesis 42, it's not just a game. The effects of discipline are real and uncomfortable, as we will see in a moment. Joseph is now at least 20 years post-cistern experience. He is governor of all Egypt and is in charge of the sale of grain for the famine-ravished nation of Egypt. Word has leaked out that Egypt has food, though, and surrounding nations are traveling to the land to purchase grain for their own starving people.

Meanwhile, northeast of Egypt in the land of Canaan, Israel and his sons and people are hungry. Famine has reached into their own land, and they're in danger of starving to death. They, too, hear of grain in Egypt, but it's a long way to travel, and what if the Egyptians won't sell them grain? 

Jacob perhaps ruminates on God's covenant promise to his grandfather Abraham. He has certainly done his part to birth the beginning of a nation, as he glances around at his eleven remaining sons and one daughter. The fact remains, though, that no matter how many children he has produced -- there will be no future nation for them if they don't get food... and soon. So Jacob tells his sons, "Why do you just keep looking at each other?" (That line made me laugh.) "I have heard that there is grain in Egypt. Go down there and buy some for us, so that we may live and not die" (Genesis 42:2).

So ten of Jacob's sons pack their silver in their empty grain bags and make the long journey down to Egypt. Jacob keeps Benjamin, the only remaining son of his beloved Rachel, at home with him. 

When there seems to be no way, God makes a way for the Israelites. When international crises close in around them, God shows them the way He has already paved, the way He has been building up for 20 years in the faraway land of Egypt. When all Jacob can see is the death of his favorite son and the impending death of himself and his remaining sons... God points to the most improbable, most unexpected channel of hope there is: Grain in Egypt. And the governor is known to be selling some.

When Jacob's sons arrive in Egypt, they come before the governor, who is in charge of grain sales. As we already know, the governor... is their own brother Joseph.

Now Joseph looks a little different from his appearance of 20 years ago. Egyptians, culturally, are smooth-shaven (Genesis 41:14). Israelites, culturally, wear beards (2 Samuel 10:5 and Jeremiah 41:5). When Joseph had been sold into slavery, it is likely that he sported a beard, too, so the last time the brothers would have seen Joseph beardless... would have been in his prepubescent stage of life.

No wonder they don't recognize him. That, and Joseph is using an interpreter to speak to them.

I can only imagine the overwhelming emotions Joseph experiences as he watches his brothers file into the room. The last time he's seen any of them was when he was strong-armed into an Ishmaelite caravan and prodded south to Egypt while their figures grew more and more distant behind him.

For 20-plus years, Joseph has gone through the wringer, and at last, he stands in the exact position where the Lord wants him to be. He has had to lay down any expectation of ever seeing his family again, and he has had to turn around, to stop regretting his past, to stop longing for what he had, and look to his future. He holds an important government job, a wife, two sons. He has forged a new life out of the ashes of his old one.

And now some embers from that cold fire unbury themselves and come back, presumably, to burn him.

Joseph has no idea if his brothers' hearts have changed in the intervening years. He decides to test them to make certain. So... he accuses them of being spies. 

The brothers glance at one another. This is unexpected. They rush to defend themselves, and they explain who they are, whose son they are, and one other particular: They tell about their younger brother Benjamin -- Joseph's only full-blood brother. 

Joseph puts them all in prison for three days, and then sends all but Simeon, the second oldest brother, back to the land of Canaan with strict instruction to return for their jailed brother, but only if they bring Benjamin with them.

Naturally, this is confusing. Why such interest in Benjamin? The brothers believe they are being punished for selling Joseph into slavery 20 years ago, which tells us something significant: In 20 years, the brothers have not committed another treachery to equal what they did to Joseph. They don't even debate this: "Well, maybe we're being punished for selling Joseph, or maybe we're being punished because of [unnamed event] over here." 

Selling Joseph had been the rock-bottom of their downward spiral. Repentance is a long road upward, and it seems that they had been on that road for a while. 

This discipline is painful. Everything seems against them. Not only do they find themselves falsely accused of espionage, and not only are they required to leave Simeon behind in Egypt, but now they must bring their father's remaining favorite son back with them, and they all know what Jacob is going to say about that.

No. Absotively, posilutely NOT!

Joseph, here, is treating his brothers with the discipline that they should perhaps have received 20 years before this. 

It hurt, this discipline. Hebrews 12:7 says: "Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons." In verse 11, it says: "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."

Joseph, undeniably, has gone through a regime of discipline. He has been trained by it, and his harvest is already there. His brothers, on the other hand, still have a way to go. They're in the middle of the pressing. As we'll see in upcoming chapters, there's going to be a harvest. But they have to undergo the pain of it first.

That's one thing I wish we -- as followers of Christ -- could see a little more clearly, could understand a little better: When hardship comes, embrace it. Grasp it. Wrestle with it. Emerge stronger on the other side. Proverbs 3:11-12 says: "My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent His rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those He loves as a father the son he delights in."

Reminder: we have an inheritance, as children of God. That inheritance is evidence of our primogeniture (see, like, all my previous Genesis posts for more about primogeniture). But discipline is also evidence of that primogeniture. 

I'm no athlete, and so I really, really despise the rigors of "getting in shape." I groan at the reminder that 30 minutes of daily exercise is the minimum recommended for health. I hate the discomfort of maximum heart-rate, pumping lungs, shredding muscles, burning calories, etc. 

But with steady, constant, daily discipline, my body grows in health and strength. Maintaining such a state of health requires focused, constant discomfort for regular, short amounts of time, though, to reap the long-term benefits.

1 Corinthians 9:25-27 describes this process in detail: "Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize."

Sometimes, when we're surrounded by hardship, we feel like we're ramming pointlessly against our prison walls. There's no way through them.

I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

Remember Joseph. Remember his brothers. In the end, each of them come through stronger. They have happy endings in Scripture. Their results aren't unmixed by pain, but in that pain, each of them finds a way to grow stronger.

My small reminder that God makes a way came through a simple backyard Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. What reminders do you see? In the middle of the desert, what stream have you picked out?