Lectio Divina from the Jesse Tree
JOSEPH SAVES ISREAL – Day 7 coat of many colors 🌎
Genesis 37:2-28; 45:3-8
“They hated him so much, they could not say a kind word to him.”
Perhaps you remember the story of Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors or the technicolor play that made it famous or how much he was loved by his father or how his naivety and ignorance led him to be sold because he could not stop boasting about his dreams. But do you recall also how much his brothers hated him?
Imagine what it is to hate someone so much you cannot utter even one pleasantry in their direction. Now imagine they’re one of your family members. Do you hate them because they’re young? Is it really their nativity that irks you? Or is it the lie you are believing about how much they are loved more than you?
Our loss of identity can keep us blinded to the truth. It’s easier to blame others for taking our spotlight than to see the places in our own lives that make us difficult to love. Joseph’s brothers were deceivers, they lied about where they would be in the fields, they uttered no words of kindness to the least among them, and they plotted murder in their hearts. Is it any difficulty to wonder why their father was able to love Joseph better?
While our identity is not rooted in the lies we believe, our behaviour shows fruit that can be displeasing to others. We don’t realise it but even if they gave us the love we deserve our own blindness would keep us from accepting it because of the lie we believe that we are undeserving.
“Here comes that dreamer.”
Despite their betrayals, young Joseph presses on in innocence. He somehow keeps a right perspective of whose son he is even after his brothers betray him, strip him of his tunic, and sell him for silver. Though they did not have him scourged or murder him on a cross, Joseph endured the harshness of their betrayal. Wounds cut deepest when they are made by the hand of those we love.
Yet somehow the dreamers turn those wounds into battle scars of glory!
“Do not be angry with yourselves. It was for your sake that God sent me.”
In Joseph, we see the hope of our Messiah to come. An innocent young man, betrayed and hated by his brothers, loved by His Father, beloved above all other sons. And in perfect innocence he begs us to forgive ourselves and to receive the love our Father so generously wants to give. In Joseph, we catch a glimpse of the greatness within ourselves to be known and to be loved and to love others in-spite of themselves.
“God sent me on ahead of you…to ensure for you a remnant on earth, to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. He has made me a father, Lord of all his household, ruler over the whole land.”
Such is the destiny of sons who know the love of their Father and do not reject it. They are the dreamers not the blasphemers, the innocent not the wise, the ones who see their destiny written in the stars and their worth wrapped around them in their Heavenly Father’s arms. They see the world not in black and white but in living color.
“And all creation is waiting for the sons of God to arise.”
This year’s Advent Meditations are brought to you through the use of the Jesse Tree Journal by the Disciple of Christ – Education in Virtue at OpenLightMedia.com. Visit their site for a copy of the Jesse Tree Advent Journal and begin your own journey to #EncounterHim
