Today's Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 50 verses 15 through 20:
15 Realizing that their father was dead, Joseph’s brothers said, ‘What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong that we did to him?’ 16So they approached* Joseph, saying, ‘Your father gave this instruction before he died, 17“Say to Joseph: I beg you, forgive the crime of your brothers and the wrong they did in harming you.” Now therefore please forgive the crime of the servants of the God of your father.’ Joseph wept when they spoke to him. 18Then his brothers also wept,* fell down before him, and said, ‘We are here as your slaves.’ 19But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? 20Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.
The things that happened to Joseph were cruel and unjust. He lost years of his life behind bars, and was written off as dead by those who didn't know he was still alive. Sadly, it was his own brothers who had sold him into slavery and pretended he had died.
Bitterness and resentment could have consumed him. Retaliation and revenge could have taken hold. But instead Joseph chose to forgive -- not to forget -- but to forgive.
Desmond Tutu wrote a book about South African after Apartheid. It is titled "No Future Without Forgiveness".
Resentment and revenge feel good in the moment. And maybe they give to others what they had coming. But they also imprison us in a strained, estranged, and unreconciled past, with no future for a shared redemption.
Perhaps not all things can be forgiven. Certainly, we cannot expect everyone to forgive everything.
But the future is still open. Today is a new day. And tomorrow is not yet set in stone.
I don't want to live it without forgiveness.
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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