Daily Reflection Friday of the Second Week of Lent

Perhaps a little genealogy is in order to better understand our first reading today regarding Joseph and his brothers from late in Genesis. Joseph was the first of two sons born to Jacob (aka Israel- the son of Isaac who was the son of Abraham) and Rachel (his brother Benjamin was the second son, the only children born to Rachel). Jacob’s eleven other children (all sons except his only daughter Dinah) were born either of Leah (the older sister of Rachel whose father, Laban, tricked Jacob into marrying), or Bilhah (Rachel’s servant given to her by Laban on her marriage to Jacob who, when Rachel did not bear children, she gave to Jacob to bear him descendants), or Zilpha (the servant of Leah who Leah gave to Jacob after she ceased conceiving after her fourth son born to Jacob).  
 
Is that all clear? Yes, it’s complicated. The point is that almost all of Joseph’s brothers were his half-brothers, except Benjamin. Reuban was the first of all Jacob’s children and thus, as the eldest, he alone had the grace to seek to save his half-brother Joseph from the jealous rage of his other brothers. This entire terrible scene was the direct result of Jacob holding Joseph in such obvious esteem over his other children. Parents truly have a sacred duty to strive to never reveal in any way who among their children is their favorite, even when everyone knows that parents do indeed have favorites. And in a family as large as Jacob’s, this is that much more imperative. His folly caused both Joseph, his brothers and Jacob himself (who was a widower after Rachel had died giving birth to Benjamin) immense pain and long suffering.
 
Joseph’s brothers’ terrible rage against him is grimly exposed in their sheer callousness in blithely eating their lunch while ignoring the cries of their brother they had flung bodily into that deep well (as I said last year when I also talked of this passage, poor Joseph’s cries filled their ears while they filled their mouths). But we know how it all ends years later with Joseph having become a man of great power and influence in Egypt. There, he reunites with and forgives his brothers who have been racked by guilt for years and brings his poor grieving father and the entire clan to Egypt, which sets the stage for the future Exodus, the wandering in the desert and the establishment of Jerusalem in the promised land, and, by extension, King David from whose family came the birth of Jesus, the longed for messiah, in Bethlehem.
 
It is all a most powerful example of how God can use what seem to be the very worst of events to bring about very blessed results. This has been proven time and time again. Ask the person who has survived a life-threatening illness. Ask any addict who has found, in recovery, a life they could never before have imagined. Ask those who have suffered great loses from fire, flood or other catastrophic events or who have lost everything and have gone on. Ask those who have suffered scandal or loss of reputation or imprisonment and have rebuilt their lives for the better afterwards.
 
Resist judging anything as a catastrophe or the worst thing that could happen, for if you believe that, then that is exactly what it will be for you if it does happen. Rather, pray for the grace to find God present within everything that happens (not causing it, but somehow very present within it). Say to yourself, “My loving God, I do not know why this is happening and I do not understand it. But I believe that you are with me and will show me your great gift hiding within what seems like anything but.” If we can, with God’s grace through prayer and seeking, accept seemingly tragic events and the pain they bring us, then God will give us a great peace and strength that nothing can ever take away because we have trusted only in God, not in what has happened. Who could possibly have seen that Jesus’ terrible death by crucifixion would bring about the resurrection and the salvation of all the world? “Yea, though I walk through the dark valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil: for you are at my side with your rod and your staff that give me courage.”