When Everything Changes

"Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt."  Exodus 1:8

When Everything Changes!
By Rev. William Dohle

It happens to everyone...

You're going along, minding your own business.  Doing nothing really out of the ordinary to call attention to yourself...just living life.  When suddenly... BAM!

Everything changes!

What follows brings turmoil to your once peaceful life.

When could this happen... well...
You could have had a good paying job when... BAM! ... You're laid off!
You could have just been living when... BAM!... A Heart Attack!
You could be enjoying your family when... BAM! ... Cancer!

However it happens, the moment everything changes is never a good one!  When it does happen, we long for better days.  We yearn for the days of health and well-being.  We pine after the days of a steady income and less stress over money.  We want, above all else, to escape from whatever has changed our lives.

This moment happens, not just to us, but also to the people of Israel.

Between the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus a lot has changed.  The Bible tells us "Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers, and became so numerous that the land was filled with them."

In other words... time has passed for the people of Israel in Egypt.  And that time has brought... babies!  More babies than they can count.  So many babies in fact that the land is filled with Israelites babies and their babies' babies!

The prosperous time has come!  No longer are they stranded in Canaan, a people of just a single family.  Now the people of Israel are so numerous that the land can't hold them!

Wow!

But now... everything is changing!  For a new king who doesn't care for Joseph and what he did for Egypt has ascended to the throne.

And now the time of stressfulness has come!  For this king, seeing the number of Israelite babies has decreed that boy babies born of Israelites are to be killed after birth.  Girls may life.  And the rest of the Israelites are to be worked ruthlessly.  "They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the field."(Exodus 1:14)

Everything has changed...and it's not good!

Still God is working in their lives.  "God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous.  And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own."

God is still watching out for them!

And God watches out for you too!  The question we pose most often after everything has changed is simple and yet so profound.

"Where are you, God?"

Thinking that God is only with us when things are going right.  Thinking that for some reason nothing should change if we truly believe in God, we get hung up on this question.

And yet... God is with us, just as he is with the people of Israel.  God isn't found high above in some highest heaven.  He's down here...with the midwives.  He's here where people respect God enough to disobey their civil leaders.  He's here where people are struggling and fighting oppression on every side.  He's here where death is at every turn.  He's here...in the details of their lives.

And God is with you there too.  The fact that everything changes doesn't mean that God has changed.  God is still faithful, no matter what.  God's promises remain with us both when life is at its best and when life is at its worst.  And God will see us through, one way or another, to His Promised Land.

God we live in a world of changes, a world of dangers and disasters.  Give us faith that we might see your unchanging love, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

God's Intentions

"Do not 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."  Genesis 50:20

God's Intentions
By Rev. William Dohle

We have a natural tendency in life to look at the good in our lives as being from God.
And the evil of our lives as NOT being from God.

We see the newborn baby and say: "That precious gift is from God."
We see the West Nile virus and say: "That isn't from God."

We see the hungry being fed, the naked being clothed, and we think: "That is from God."
We see the homeless suffering and the poor go needy and we think: "That isn't from God."

We judge, even the actions of others, as being from God or not from God.

The cashier who was kind to you...was from God.
The daughter's rejection you suffered at the latest family gathering...was not from God.

It's natural, I suppose, to assume this and place the good in one pile under God's leadership and the bad under the leadership of someone or something else.  It's part of our dualistic world.  God is good and only wants good things for us.  God wouldn't put something bad in our way.  Would he?

Imagine if you or your loved one was diagnosed with cancer.  A terrible aggressive form of cancer.  The only thing that could counter such a cancer would be a chemotherapy that was equally as terrible and equally as aggressive.  You start on the therapy, knowing that in killing your bad cells, the good cells in your body will also be killed.  You suffer from terrible sickness...but it works!  You emerge cancer-free.

Now... was the terrible chemotherapy from God??  Did it not kill you to save you??  Did it not hurt you to help you??

This is the conclusion Joseph comes to when his brothers come worried over their fate.  With their father dead, they're unsure what Joseph will do.  Joseph says, with all wisdom.

"Am I in the place of God?"... That is... do I have the power to judge you?

"You intended this to harm me..." ... Joseph's brothers didn't want to help him.  They wanted to hurt him.  Their intention was not to bring their brother to a better place, but to get rid of him.

"...but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."... God's intention behind Joseph being sold into slavery, Joseph being thrown into prison, and all the terrible things that happened to him, was to bring him to Egypt so that others might be helped.  God intended this death to bring him to new life!

In my life, I have faced problems caused by people who intended to harm me.  Despite their platitudes, they didn't intend to help me but to hurt me and punish me.  Their evil I could see on their faces, in the words, and in their actions.  They really didn't want me to succeed.

But God has used such things for good.  God has closed one door and opened another.  God has pushed me from one place, only to help me arrive in a better place.

A part of me wishes I could be angry with them about it.  After all...they intended it for evil!  But God has intended it for good.  And so, I cannot be angry with them over what happened.  I am not in the place of God.  I cannot judge them.  God has used their actions for good, just as He promised.  God has used this death and that death to bring me more and more life.

And he does the same for you.  The actions or the inactions of others in your life have made you the person you are today.  Even the suffering in your life has contributed to the person you are today.  So...relax!  Forgive!  Let God be God.  Do not try to assume you know the effect others actions have had on your life.  Instead trust it all to God, who we know "works all things for good to those who love him, those who are called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28)

I am not in your place, God.  I do not understand your intentions for my life, but I trust that you want only the good.  Lead me to trust you with everything in my life, through Jesus Christ my Lord.  Amen.

Oh to forget!

"What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?"  Genesis 50:15

Oh To Forget!
By Rev. William Dohle

I am a very forgetful person.  I just am!

I forget where I put my keys...probably 3 - 4 times per day!
I forget my wallet the same.
I forget what I'm supposed to get at the store...unless I write it down.
And I forget people's names...sometimes spontaneously so!
I forget what I'm doing in a particular room.

I'm just forgetful!

But there are things that I wish I could forget.  Things I wish were no longer in my head...

I wish I could forget...what those who injured me have done.
I wish I could forget...how hurt I was when they talked behind my back.
I wish I could forget...the guilt I have over a broken friendship.
I wish I could forget...what I've done wrong.

There are things I wish I could forget...and those I wish I didn't.  And for some reason...those two lists don't work so well together.  I find myself forgetting what I need to remember and remembering what I need to forget!  Ahh!

Today we hear Joseph's brother's falling into the same trap.  Joseph's brothers, after these many years, are worried.  You see...they remember what they did to Joseph.  How they sold him into slavery and sent him off to Egypt.  But they worry: "Does Joseph remember?  Is Joseph holding a grudge?"

"What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrong we did to him?"

So... what do Joseph's brothers do?  They lie!  That's right!  They lie about what their father said.  They figure, since Joseph loved Jacob as much as he did, that maybe Jacob's word will clear their name.  So they tell Joseph...

"Your father left these instructions before he died: 'This is what you are to say to Joseph:  I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.'  Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father."(Gen. 50:16-17)

We're told, after he heard this, Joseph wept!

Why?  Why did he react that way?  Because Joseph had forgotten!  He had put what they had done to him out of their mind.  Their sins were erased, forgotten.  The past was past and Joseph had moved on!

His brothers hadn't!  Even after all this time.  Even after Joseph had been kind to them and shown them every kind of compassion, his brothers were afraid.  Thinking their father had stopped Joseph from taking revenge, they feared for themselves and their families after what they did.

Only there was nothing to be afraid of.  Joseph had forgotten.  The past was past.

We can learn a lesson from Joseph here.  To forget!  There is nothing so bad that requires you to hold on...and remember it forever!  There is no sin so bad that forgiveness cannot cover it.  There is no hurt you have that cannot be put behind you.

God knows!  God forgets!  When sins are forgiven, they are forgotten by God.  "As far as the east is from the west, so far have you put our transgressions before you."  That's how far away your sins are to God.  God doesn't remember them... why are you?

You have a choice.  You can hold onto the past.  You can live in your own mistake, thinking and believing that others judge you because of it, or you can choose to move on, to forget the past, and allow that mistake to make you a better person.

What will you choose to do?  Allow yourself to forget and live forgiven?  Or live instead in the past?

Forgiving, life-giving God, you have put our sins far behind you in Jesus.  You no longer remember what we did.  Help us to forget the sins of others.  Help us to forgive ourselves too.  Amen.

God's Crazy Turnaround

When Joseph saw his father placing his right hand on Ephraim's head he was displeased; so he took hold of his father's hand to move it from Ephraim's head to Manasseh's head.  Joseph said to him, "No my father, this one is the firstborn; put your right hand on his head."(Gen. 48:17-18)

God's Crazy Turnaround!
By Rev. William Dohle

I'm convinced: Parents don't realize how their words affect their children.  Not really.

It was eight years ago.  I was driving home with my family back from Utah where my parents and siblings all live.  We had stopped at a gas station just outside town and my father had graciously agreed to pay for our first tank of gas to get us home.

(For some reason I feel like I've shared this story here before...but good stories like this are worth repeating...as we shall see by the Genesis tale where the same theme is repeated again in Joseph's life!).

As we stood there by the pump, my father smiled.  "You know, Billy, your brother is really going to go far in life!"

"Really, Dad..." I said, wondering where he was going with this.

"Yup.  It's funny how different you kids are from each other.  Someday I can see your brother Sam having a big boat and a huge house.  He's going to be the richest one of all of you.  Then he'll have you all out on that boat together and..."

I really don't remember much more from the conversation than that.  I was too busy in my own thoughts.  But those few words stuck in my head.  Maybe you could say they reminded me of our Joseph story for they sounded just like the words Jacob speaks to his sons.  They were words of prophecy, foretelling the future, words of blessing, commending good behavior, and words of cursing, sealing their fates.

When Jacob tells his son, "Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, the first sign of my strength, excelling in honor, excelling in power.  Turbulent as the waters, you will no longer excel..."  I could hear echoes of those words coming from my father.

"Your brother will be the rich one.  In riches he will outdo you..."

True, I know my father loves me and is proud of me.  But at that moment it didn't feel that way.  Maybe it's because I'm the oldest of four and I've always had some form of sibling rivalry going on with my siblings, much like Joseph's family.  Even as an adult, I still feel like I compete for my parents' attention.  And at that very moment, those words hit me in the gut and I felt like the biggest loser of all my siblings.

That feeling, if bottled, might actually be what Joseph and his sons felt as they knelt down at their father Jacob's deathbed.  Joseph had just brought his two boys to their grandfather's bedside.  They knew really nothing of each other.  Each of Joseph's boys(Ephraim and Manasseh) had been born in Egypt with little knowledge of their extended family elsewhere.

Jacob called them over to him.  "Your two sons," he told Joseph, "will be reckoned as mine, just as Reuben and Simeon are mine".   It was an honor.  Joseph's children would become the ancestors of the tribe of Ephraim and the tribe of Manasseh!

Bringing them close to Jacob's bedside, Jacob laid his hands on the two boys' heads.  Ephraim on Jacob's left hand and Manasseh on his right hand.

But when Jacob reached out to touch them, he switched.  Placing his right hand on Ephraim's head, he essentially gave him the blessing that comes from being the oldest, switching their birth orders.

Joseph tries to intervene, but Jacob stops him.  "He too will become a people and he too will become great.  Nevertheless, his younger brother will be greater than he, and his descendants will become a group of nations."


Why he did this?  Why did he switch the birth orders?  Didn't he realize how many problems it might cause?  Didn't he see the sibling rivalry that would ensue?

Maybe he did.  Maybe he remembered what happened with him when he stole his brother's birthright.  Maybe he recalled how God worked through that event.  Maybe Jacob recalled how God chose Jacob, the second born of Isaac, also the second born of Abraham.  Maybe Jacob could see at the end of his life that God's crazy way of turning this world around wasn't stopping with him or even with Joseph, but would continue through his sons and their sons all the way to Jesus.  Maybe Jacob could see that this mistake was no mistake for God!

For in God's craziness, God often chooses the weak to shame the strong.  He chooses the second borns and the third borns, not the first ones, to accomplish His will.  As Paul says: "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.  God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him."(1 Cor. 1:27-29)

So the next time you think to yourself: That person won't amount to anything!  Or the next time you try to figure out what your children will become... stop!  You don't know the mind of God!  God has great plans in store, even for the lowliest among us.  For, it is from bloodline of Judah, a line filled with losers, riddled with sins, peppered with scandals, that Jesus Christ emerges, who is and who was and who ever will be the Lord and Savior of losers everywhere!

With a limited view, Lord, we see the world and each other.  Give us the eyes of Christ that we might see the good and the potential in everyone we meet, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen. 

Taking the Lowest Place

But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first. Matthew 19:30

Taking the Lowest Place
By Rev. William Dohle

Every two years we Americans suffer through a time full of big egos and empty promises.  A month when men and women in high positions take time out of their already busy schedules to speak well of themselves and ill of each other, hoping beyond hope that they will look better than the other person and win the populous' approval.

That's right.  It's election season again!

No matter what your political persuasion.  No matter which party you adhere to.  No matter who you vote for there is but one formula everyone is using when running a political campaign.

Self promotion + Negative Press of the Other Candidate = Victory!!

Show me a political campaign that doesn't include one or both of these elements and I will be greatly surprised!  That's how elections are won, after all.  Promote yourself while tearing down your opponent.

But what if that wasn't the case?  What if we took out the negative press AND the self-promotion?  What if instead of lifting ourselves up high and stomping the other low, instead of promoting ourselves to the highest level and pushing the other down, what if we volunarily took the lowest place instead?  What would that look like?

That's what Jacob does when he's standing before Pharaoh.  After leaving his home in Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey, as they use to say, Joseph tells his father to ask for nothing from Pharaoh except a place in a land known as Goshen.  A land occupied by the detestable shepherds!

"When Pharaoh calls you in and asks, ‘What is your occupation?’ you should answer, ‘Your servants have tended livestock from our boyhood on, just as our fathers did.’ Then you will be allowed to settle in the region of Goshen, for all shepherds are detestable to the Egyptians.”(Genesis 46:33-34).

And so, Jacob does just that.  Instead of asking for the best land in Egypt.  Instead of acting like royalty.  Instead of demanding his own rights, Jacob assumes the lowest place in Pharaoh's kingdom.

"Your servants are shepherds,” [Jacob and his sons] replied to Pharaoh, “just as our fathers were.” They also said to him, “We have come to live here for a while, because the famine is severe in Canaan and your servants’ flocks have no pasture. So now, please let your servants settle in Goshen.”

Pharaoh agrees, ironically calling Goshen the best land in Egypt and giving Jacob and his sons rights over his own livestock. 

"Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Your father and your brothers have come to you, and the land of Egypt is before you; settle your father and your brothers in the best part of the land. Let them live in Goshen. And if you know of any among them with special ability, put them in charge of my own livestock.”

Whether Goshen was the best land or whether, as Joseph says before, the Egytians despise shepherds and sent them off to live there, Jacob still took the least place with Pharaoh.  Instead of demanding his rights or any kind of special treatment, he calls himself and his children Pharaoh's servants.  He doesn't presume anything about himself.  He takes the lowest place...confident that God will raise him up.

This wisdom sounds absurd!  Take the lowest place?  Give up promoting ourselves?  But it is a wisdom echoed elsewhere in Scripture and even by Jesus Christ himself.

Jesus, like Jacob, speaks of taking the last place.  “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited.  If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”(Luke 14:8-11).

Maybe Jesus understood what his ancestor had done.  Maybe Jesus knew that in taking the lowest place, by agreeing to go to Goshen, Jacob had allowed himself to be humbled so God, in his infinite mercy, might raise he and his family up again.  For it was from the land of Goshen that Jacob's descendants would one day be led by Moses from Egypt into the Promised Land.

We too are challenged with these words and actions.  We are commanded by our Lord not to raise ourselves up with our words and deeds, but to take the lowest place, to humble ourselves.  We might not win an election with our actions, but we will be following Christ Jesus who humbled himself for our sake and was exalted by God.

When tempted with self-promotion, help me to take the road to the cross, the road that your Son walked that led from the cross to resurrection.  Amen.