Where Are They Now? a Sequel: Coat of Many Colors
the heart of Biblical Greats
October 6th, 2021
Romans 8:3-4, ‘God went for the jugular when He sent His own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In His Son, Jesus, He personally took on the human condition, entered into the disorderly mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.’ (the MESSAGE)
Coat of Many Colors
Genesis 50:19-20, ‘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.”’ (NIV)
Joseph had lived a long life, a privileged life in many ways, despite all the attempts at ruin which had befallen him his entire life. As the sun began to set on his life, he could reflect triumphantly, and with great peace and dignity. He spread across his lap the coat his father had made for him, now threadbare and thin, from all his years of holding the fabric to his cheek when he needed comfort. Like a well-deserved prize now after the many years it cost him to enjoy the feel of it, he favored the memories most of all. Through the window looking eastward, he could see many of his brothers’ family members, now his family too. He had reconciled those hurts and hardships, wounds and scars, when no one had expected him to. But it had been right, the right thing to do. He sighed. Oh, had they made life difficult, his brothers had. A wistful tear slid down his cheek. Ah, the miles. ‘It’s not the years, but the miles,’ he whispered.
A thought had been playing hide-n-seek with his mind for years, and he knew he truly needed to take it out and polish it up and consider it. He refused to pause earlier in life; why, Joseph had always slept with one eye open, half-heartedly enjoying life during prosperous times, because someone was always out to get him. But now, as life was more focused in hindsight than in foresight, he needed to put some things to rest, so he finally could be at total peace.
Joseph remembered well all he had been told during his childhood, about his father Jacob whom he had loved dearly, and what scarce memories he had of his mother Rachel. He knew of the stories of old, and how his father had always strived for the affection of his own father Isaac, but he had seldom reaped an honest reward. True, Jacob had taken the birthright and he’d gotten the blessing, but he had done so deceitfully, and therefore, had paid dearly for his transgressions. It all made sense now however as Joseph commiserated about his father. He’d had a tight bond with him, a great love he always felt from Jacob, and it was what had split the entire family in two distinct pieces. He on one side; all his brothers on the other, and his dad smack in the middle. It had waged a war for their lifetime, but Joseph now could see the scar his father had been adorned with, always trying to measure up and achieve the attention from the man he most admired. It’s what he knew, an inherent quality passed from generation to generation, like a family emblem, one of favoritism and competition and jealousy, a vicious, snarling cycle. And today it could end here; it could be buried here. Gone! the striving, the discord, the contest. As he had forgiven his brothers and favored them, God Almighty had restored the broken relationships suffering for so long, and the hatchet could now be embedded in the tree and walked away from. The calm which now settled over Joseph and the homestead he shared with his family finally was worth more than any other treasure he could recall, the gift of God’s goodness so overwhelming and gratefully accepted.
John 3:16-17, ‘”For here is the way God loved the world—He gave His only, unique Son as a gift. So now everyone who believes in Him will never perish but experience everlasting life. God did not send His Son into the world to judge and condemn the world, but to be its Savior and rescue it!”’ (TPT)
