Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 45 verses 4 through 8a:
4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. 5 And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. 6 For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. 7 God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. 8 So it was not you who sent me here, but God.
The Genesis writer is likely writing to a people in exile and bondage, something like the kind of exile and bondage Joseph endured in Egypt. He is trying to tell them not to despair. He is trying to articulate to them a hope that God is and always has been and always will be at work — even in their bondage.
Theologians call this “salvation history”; it is the often hidden, yet ongoing, and ultimately revealed way God works in history to redeem the world.
Joseph was sold into exile by his brothers. That is true. That is history. But God was also working in all this to ultimately save Joseph, his family, and indeed the whole world from famine. That is salvation history.
In the most difficult times and even amidst the most evil deeds God is still working God’s purposes out. God is for us. And in the end, when all is revealed, it will be shown how God purposes all things to the good.
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