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The long return.

February 25, 2010 in Uncategorized with 19 Comments

(I wrote this a year ago for people like me who have made mistakes and hold out hope that it’s not impossible to return. It’s probably one of my favorite examples of a mess up coming back. It’s from Genesis 43)

In Genesis chapter 43, the tension with Joseph is building. As you know, he’s in charge of Egypt and his brothers, who sold him into slavery, have come to unknowingly ask for food. His plan to study and forgive his brothers is unfolding and Benjamin arrives, breaking Joseph down into a private moment of weeping. But what’s interesting to me happens before Benjamin shows up in Egypt.

Listen to the speech that Judah, the man who impregnated a prostitute/daughter-in-law and condemned her to death before being exposed, says to his father in verses 8-9:

Then Judah said to Israel his father, “Send the boy along with me and we will go at once, so that we and you and our children may live and not die. I myself will guarantee his safety; you can hold me personally responsible for him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him here before you, I will bear the blame before you all my life.”

That makes a nice paragraph but it is beautiful when you dissect it and see the words a man once known for shirking family responsibilities actually uses:

Send the boy along with me

We will go

I myself guarantee his safety

You can hold me personally responsible

If I do not bring him back

I will bear the blame before you all my life.

Judah, is that you? Can that be? Could that paragraph be more jam packed with words indicating a man of serious responsibility is about to step up to a dangerous situation?

I love it. I love that the Bible is full of mess ups that come back. Abject failures of human beings that through God’s grace are pulled from the pit and do some tremendous things.

We are created to change. I don’t care if you’re a bad dad, a fired employee, a divorced parent that feels like life is an island right now. Within you beats the song of change. It may be quiet right now. You might feel like it will never sing again, but just like Abraham, just like Judah, we are all capable of change in the eyes of the Lord.