My buddy Nathan and I showed up to class this morning looking like this, the class being a religion one, no less. Whoops. Completely accidental, too. And I proceeded to put my hoodie back on, thermostat set at something like eighty.
It's looking to be an interesting class, though. It's Great Books: World Religion and at least recently I've been interested in learning more about other religions, specifically Islam. So we'll see. Class today didn't disappoint. The professor accidentally knocked over his opened water bottle and didn't realize until someone said something. He jumped up, yelled something that starts with a sh- and rhymes with fit, started wiping up all the water and picking his pretty-soaked-through religious texts. And then! Then he said, this is a sign--I don't know what it means, but that right there was a sign! Once everything was wiped up he went back to being mild-mannered and shuffled over to the podium and kind of mumbled, sorry for anything I might have said. So today, all around, all parties considered: facepalm/fail/smooth, all in the best way possible.
I've been reading in Genesis lately and the last few days I've been reading about Joseph. I never really knew the story of Joseph, actually--between never having read it or been taught on it and, no, never having seen Joseph, King of Dreams, I just couldn't have told you anything about him. And so tonight, reading this, once again God and the story of his people blow my mind.
"'I am the God, the God of your father,' he said. 'Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you into a great nation there. I will go down to Egypt to be with you, and I will surely bring you back again. And Joseph's own hand will close your eyes.'" (Genesis 46:3-4)
Let me back up first. Joseph was the youngest son of Jacob (Israel) and when he was seventeen his brothers sold him into slavery. He was brought down to Egypt where he was servant for a while in the house of his master, put in charge of the whole household. But then he was accused (falsely) of rape and thrown in jail, but God was with him and he found favor and was put in charge of everything there too. Some pretty amazing things happen in jail where he interprets dreams and eventually is brought before Pharaoh and is then put in charge of all of Egypt.
All these crazy hard things keep happening to Joseph and at the same time God is with him, people find favor in him wherever he goes. So then there's this huge famine in Egypt and all over--Pharaoh had a dream about this that Joseph interpreted--and Joseph's brothers come out of Canaan to Egypt where there's food stored up and they come before him. But these brothers were gonna kill him, they faked his death and sold him, right? So Joseph hasn't forgiven them at all and he makes them do all this jumping through hoops and sends them back and forth from Egypt to Canaan several times. And his father Jacob thinks that now he's lost both Joseph and Benjamin, his two youngest sons.
Turns out he hasn't. Turns out that even though Joseph is so bitter, he still forgives his brothers and asks that his father and the whole extended family be brought to Egypt to live. Joseph tells his brothers to tell their father, "about all the honor accorded [him] in Egypt and about everything [they] have seen." (Gen. 45:13) And it turns out that all along God was with him, that he was turning everything on its head for good, and that even before Israel went to Egypt, God promised bring them back again.
Now let me tell you, I know about some unforgiveness in the family, and I know about wanting to have something good to show to the Father. And mostly I know about how you look back and you see how God's been working all along through everything. Who would have thought that before the Hebrews went down to Egypt, before they cried out to him, God was saying I will bring you back. That he sent Joseph first to save their lives.
All that brokenness and unforgiveness and we've been that way since the very beginning but our God is a God who works things for good and for hope and for purpose. I think about the way I hang onto things and become bitter, how I hear reconciliation taught and still struggle to let go, and now I think about how all over the place lately God has been showing me that his forgiveness, his love--these things are enough. And then I see Joseph, weeping because he loves his brothers and he's angry and there's all this baggage and hard stuff to deal with and how do you do it?
"Then Joseph said to his brothers, 'Come close to me.' When they had done so, he said, 'I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God..." (Genesis 45:4-8)
For a while now God has been quieting my whys, telling me to be still and know that he is my God and that is enough, and I see him all the way back now, can do nothing but walk forward knowing that he's ahead of me too.
I'm avoiding writing this post only because I know if I start trying to write everything out it really will be everything. All of it in one massive long rambling run-on thing (omission of commas purposeful--suggestive of how such a post might read). I will say this: God did amazing things at Urbana and I want to write all about those things, how God 'goes relentlessly to my heart.'
For now, here in the first days of the new year, I'm thinking how different--and how similar--this one was to the one my freshman year. That year, oh goodness. I didn't go home for Christmas and wound up hanging out at my godsister's house for a while and then heading to what I think is a Baptist conference called Big God. New Years rang in full-out praise to God, just like Urbana. Only I think there was a lot more guilt then, mainly about my relationship with God, weighed down by never feeling like I got it right with all that. I wouldn't say that now I do really well or anything like that, but I would say that there is no shame in Christ, and my God is growing me and drawing me closer to him and it's not about what I can't or don't do but what he IS doing, every single day, and his love, his freedom from sin will be enough, is enough.
I learned today that the Romanian word for New Years Eve is revelion. I'm not sure of the Latin roots for this word, so this connection might only be my own, but the first word that came to mind was revel, some sort of noun from that, revelry maybe. And how perfectly descriptive of the way we worshiped in the beginnings of the year. I'm thinking to revel in the sense of being festive, taking delight in something. I'm not talking about it being about how we felt, necessarily. I mean that we were delighting ourselves in the Lord, we were partyin' it up for Jesus, just all of us and all the joy and excitement and fervor for him you can imagine, joy being the closest word. Something like what I imagine heaven being like, all of us worshiping together and not ever wanting to stop and how good God is, celebrating his goodness. That's it, there it is. Just celebrating his goodness.
And then heading out of the dome after we missed the countdown and then did it anyway, after we had to leave, all the spontaneous singing, taking St. Louis by storm, yelling things like all y'all love Jesus say yeaa-ah, and yeaa-ah. Revelion. I don't know about in Romanian, but in English I think mostly this word to revel has negative connotations, at least to a community that associates it with a kind of Bacchus attitude. But I think that word, revelry--couldn't to revel be something like this? Something to do with losing ourselves in God as opposed to losing ourselves in the things to which it usually refers. It's exactly what we did, hands stretched upward, the love of God contagious.
