Today's Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 50 verses 4 and 5:
4 When the days of weeping for him were past, Joseph addressed the household of Pharaoh, ‘If now I have found favour with you, please speak to Pharaoh as follows: 5My father made me swear an oath; he said, “I am about to die. In the tomb that I hewed out for myself in the land of Canaan, there you shall bury me.” Now therefore let me go up, so that I may bury my father; then I will return.’
Genesis chapter 50 is a touching scene of a family coming to terms with the loss of their beloved father.
It is a long process. There is the initial shock and sadness -- the "days of weeping". Then, aided by the Egyptian process of embalming, there is also the long journey back from Egypt to the Promised Land, where the father is laid to rest.
There is more grief and wailing there too. Burial doesn't happen in a day.
I know many who are on the long journey of grief. There is the initial period of intense sadness and grief. There is is the period where everything must be tended to. But then also, there is the long road back to life.
Many friends have had to move their elderly parents with them to where they resided during COVID. Some of these parents have passed. Their ashes are being returned to their homestead. The children gather once more to say goodbye at the homeplace before returning to their own Egypt. None of it is easy.
Beloved ones, I hold you in prayer this morning as you make the sacred journey. Do not rush it. Be gentle with yourself, and remember the journey is long and necessary.
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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