Wednesday, July 8, 2015

A Faithful God

In today's first reading, Gen. 41: 55-57; 42: 5-7a, 17-24a, we are presented with the story of Joseph of Egypt as governor of that country during the famine that stretched over the then-known world. Joseph's brothers come down to Egypt for food. He imprisons them for three days and then releases only two of them to return to their father with the instructions to return with their youngest brother. The brothers realized that "what goes around comes around," so to speak. They believe that they are being punished for having sold their brother Joseph into slavery, ignoring his pleas for mercy.

Joseph teaches us to make good of a bad situation. He remains faithful to God through all of the ordeals of his life and God remains faithful to him. God also shows mercy to Joseph's brothers, whose family would have died of  starvation without Joseph's intervention. 

You and I, as sinners, fall short every day. God does not. At times we become the "Josephs" in other people's lives. At other times, we become the "victims" of other peoples' jealousy and anger, shortsightedness and pride, as happened to Joseph. Like Joseph, at times, we become "slaves" of some sort. At times, we find ourselves in situations that are painful, that demand faithfulness, creativity, and a commitment to the One who alone can save us and make right the wrongs in our lives.

Joseph rose to greatness not on his own power but in cooperation with others in his life and, paramount, in being faithful to God. So, too, with us. We need both God and others. When people we counted on fail us, we need to reach out to other people that God provides for our well-being. We need to, with the help of God and others, find ways to live fruitful lives, making "lemonade" when life throws us lemons, so to speak.   

We always have choices: to do our best no matter what and empower others to do the same; to wallow in self-pity and bring others down to that level as well or to  lift ourselves and others up in faith, hope and love, becoming survivors in life. We have the choice of becoming revengeful or forgiving people; to go through life with a "chip" on our shoulders that weighs us down and surround ourselves with like-minded people, or to seek to be raised up by the Spirit of God and by persons who are supportive, who recognize our talent, our giftedness, our faithfulness, and to do the same for others, as did Joseph.

Which choices have you and I made in life thus far? Which choice will we make today?

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