In the Beginning, The End

The house of my childhood sported three enormous maple trees in its front yard. Every year, those trees shed their helicopter seeds, which whirled from the branches to the ground in a confetti rain every time a strong wind blew. The result was that tiny maple trees always sprouted along the loose dirt of our flower beds or in the cool mossy areas of our shady yard. An annual task was pulling those small trees up like weeds.

I think I was ten or eleven when I decided to try out my green thumb, and rather than focusing on a garden or a typical garden plant, I went with the much hardier maple. I asked my mom if I could grow one of the small plants I'd found in the yard, and Mom, no doubt thinking I'd soon lose interest, agreed to let me transplant it to my ideal spot: in the middle of the open hill in our backyard, which got full morning sun, full evening sun, and had no competition with surrounding trees.

I found some Miracle-Gro in my parents' utility room, and I added it to some potting soil, carefully removed the small maple from its birth-spot in the flower garden next to the house, and I transplanted it to the backyard into a lovely little hole I'd dug just for it. I tamped the potting soil around it, and I watered it faithfully every day when I got home from school. 

It grew, quite literally, like a weed. Before many days had passed, it was level with my knees. As the thing shot up, I imagined tying a rope to its branches and swinging out over the hill, or sitting under it with my back against its trunk doing my homework. My visions of it were not entirely unlike the book The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein. 

The tree was rapidly turning into a sapling. It had grown as tall as I was, and whatever childish absorption I invested in this new hobby blossomed and flourished (no pun intended). So one day, when I came home from school and rounded the corner of the house to go get water for my tree's daily water-treatment, I was devastated to find no tree in sight. 

When I ran into the house and demanded to know what had happened to my tree, my mom calmly explained that she'd had my dad pull the tree up. Bluntly put, neither of my parents wanted a maple tree in the middle of the back yard. Tears ensued, although I can't remember if they were in my mom's presence or out of it. It doesn't matter; I was crushed that my rope swing tree would no longer be a thing. The effort I had put into it was all for nothing, and I wallowed in self-pity over the seeming destruction of all my efforts.

What wasn't obvious to me at the time is startlingly clear now. Of course my parents didn't want a maple in the middle of the back yard. Maples grow to be enormous, and our yard was fairly small. Their root systems are huge. The place where I had planted mine sat near the garden my parents had tried to maintain for several years; its shade would have obliterated any sun that covered the already half-shaded spot from a row of pine trees on its eastern side. 

The only thing before me at the time was my small tree and my own goal of seeing how big I could make it grow. I couldn't see the long-term effects of the tree if my parents had let my efforts carry on unchecked. My picture was small; my parents' picture was a little further-reaching and a little wiser.

Their bigger-picture knowledge was hard for me to accept. It was difficult to release the investment I'd put into my little tree. I took the ripping out of the tree personally, something I'm sure my parents hadn't intended, and in the wisdom of maturity and hindsight, I realize the offense I took was completely unnecessary. But that's what happened.

We're in the last chapter of Genesis today, Genesis 50. Jacob dies at the end of Genesis 49, and in the first verse of chapter 50, Joseph, weeping (as it seems he does a lot) throws himself on his father and sobs. You have to know he's probably feeling a little robbed. Twenty-two years of time with his father have been stripped from him, by circumstances beyond his control. 

Joseph applies to Pharaoh for a leave of absence, and he and his brothers and the dignitaries and emissaries and all the important people of Egypt head north-east to Canaan, to the same cave that Joseph's great-grandfather Abraham had bought from Ephron the Hittite years and years ago, and where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob's wife, Leah, are already buried. They reach the area, and Joseph declares a seven day period of mourning for his father. In 50:10, it says: "They lamented loudly and bitterly," so loudly and bitterly that the Canaanites notice and comment on it and actually name the place where Joseph and his brothers had mourned Abel Mizraim, which means: "Mourning of the Egyptians." It must have been deafening.

Once their mourning is over, the brothers pack up their grief and head back to Egypt. I have, in the past, wondered why the brothers went back with Joseph. Canaan is the Promised Land, promised to them. They own parts of it. Contextually, though, we see that the Canaanites have moved in, settled down, and what is likely land once belonging to Israel is now land no longer belonging to Israel. Any challenges of property will likely bring about fighting, and perhaps Israel is not yet strong enough to take this on. I noticed, particularly, in 50:24, where Joseph tells his brothers: "But God will surely come to your aid and take you up and out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." He repeats himself in the next verse: "God will surely come to your aid..."

This means two things -- one or the other or both: 1.) The Canaanites are too numerous and too hostile in the land to which they are eventually going to come back, and Israel will need God's aid to retake their land. And/or 2.) The Egyptians are already making claims on the Israelites. We read in Exodus that a new Pharaoh places the Israelites under enforced servitude, but perhaps the beginning of the mindset is already developing, and the Israelites will therefore need God's aid to leave Egypt to return to the Promised Land.

Once Joseph, his brothers, and the rest of the important Egyptian officials arrive back in Egypt, Joseph's brothers suddenly become afraid of Joseph. The old ghosts resurrect. "What if, now that our father is dead, Joseph decides to kill us all because of that thing we did to him way back when where we sold him into slavery?"

Some ghosts just never really die.

The brothers send Joseph a message, too fearful to appear before him. Once again they ask for his forgiveness; once again, they offer servitude to him.

Joseph weeps... again. He's a weeper. He wears his heart on his sleeve, and this ghost-resurrection is a gut-punch for him. He calls his brothers to him and says in 50:19-20: "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."

Was Joseph becoming a slave a good thing? Slavery is evil, horrible, an abomination. No one should own anyone else. 

But God took what was evil and brought good out of it.

Was the false accusation of rape against Joseph and his subsequent years in prison a good thing? The injustice of it makes my skin crawl. I hate that this happened to him. Potipher's wife should have been the one to suffer for years in prison, instead.

But God took what was evil and brought good out of it.

Were Joseph's years of enforced separation from his father, the parent who loved him dearly and who thought him dead for years, a good thing? It reminds me of the book Outlander where the main character Claire is separated from her husband, and she keeps trying to get back to him, but circumstance after circumstance keeps her from doing so, and halfway through the book, I wanted to throw it across the room, because her impotence is horrifying.

But God took what was evil and brought good out of it.

God always sees the big picture, and He always chooses mercy when there is mercy to be had. 2 Peter 3:9 says: "[The Lord] is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

Most of us know the story of Jonah, and we're all quite familiar with the big fish that houses Jonah in his stomach for three days and three nights until it spits him back out on dry land. The whole reason Jonah is in the fish in the first place is because he threw a temper tantrum when God told him to go warn the people of Nineveh to repent.

Nineveh, as it turns out, is a city with a population of 120,000 people, and it takes three days to traverse by foot. My footnotes say that Greater Nineveh (think: the county surrounding the city) is some sixty miles around. Nineveh, also, is one of Israel's greatest threats, politically and territorially speaking, so this provides the backdrop of Jonah's resistance in doing what God asks him to do.

Jonah, semi-contrite after his dunking in the sea and experience as fish-food, finally heads to Nineveh and delivers the Lord's warning of judgment. 

And Nineveh listens! Stinkers! Jonah, a prophet of God, warns the people of a great catastrophe, and this is what the king of Nineveh does: "When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust." He issues a proclamation to his whole city for every person and animal throughout the city to fast from both food and drink and to pray for grace and mercy.

And God, in His compassion for them... rotates the course of His judgment a full 180 degrees and does not bring the punishment He'd promised. 

This is a considerable consequence for Jonah, as, according to tradition, any prophet who proclaims the word of the Lord, and who finds his words unfulfilled... can die by stoning. So the apparent lack of fulfillment of prophecy could have resulted in Jonah's death.

No wonder he's crabby. To paraphrase, he tells the Lord: "See? THIS is why I ran the other direction when you told me to come here. I knew You'd be compassionate, that you wouldn't fulfill Your promised destruction. You relent too easily. Now I may as well die; go ahead and take me, Lord." (This last, possibly in reference to his fate as a "false" prophet, by all appearances).

The Lord replies, "Have you any right to be angry?" 

He sends a vine to shade Jonah while Jonah is sitting in the blistering heat of the sun, and then, as an object lesson, He sends a worm to eat the vine, so there's no more shade. He asks Jonah: "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?"

Again, Jonah throws a temper tantrum. "I do!" he insists. "I am angry enough to die!"

Listen to what God says: "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow."

Who did tend it and make it grow? God did. So why is Jonah so upset?

The Lord goes on: "It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?"

Oh, the grace and compassion of God! How much He loves us, all of us! 

And how often we take injury from something about which we have no right to be angry! How often we build offenses around us like towering castles in the sand, as weak as the first wave of water! How often we draw our lines in the dirt and stand rooted in our strawman arguments!

Have we any right to be angry?

The Lord sees the big picture. He grows the vine; He tends it. From the beginning of the panorama clear to the end of it, He is present. He sees all of it. He is its Creator, its Author. So what right do we have to throw a fit over our paltry, small glimpse of the bigger picture?

We are a mist that appears for a while and vanishes (James 4:14), but the word of the Lord endures forever (Isaiah 40:8).

My vision of my maple tree was quite limited in scope. I could only see the tiny seedling, then the short sapling. I had dreams of where I would take it, but I didn't consider all the far-reaching consequences. My parents did, and they had to remove the tree, an action that initially caused me pain, but which I later came to realize was a wise and far-seeing act.

Joseph's brothers had originally intended to harm him. In the end, when all the cards are laid on the table and flipped over, they realize: "God intended all of this for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives" (Genesis 50:20).

God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). So rather than being impatient with the Lord, rather than demanding that He do things according to our small vision, our limited investment, that He act according to the cards we've been dealt, how about we act according to His plan, His design? How about we wait until the cards are laid and flipped, and we can see, plain as day, the much larger scope of His plan, set forth since before the beginning of time?