When the Timeline Doesn't Make Sense

This past Saturday, my son was watching a cartoon, Bible story.  He was glued to the screen in the accounting of the story of Joseph.  I was busy in the kitchen but heard sections of the dialogue as I worked.  I was impressed with this version of the story because of the raw emotion Joseph shared throughout each journey of his life. 

This Bible story always causes me to take pause - a boy sold into slavery by his brothers, taken to a foreign land, sent to prison after being falsely accused of a crime he did not commit.  At this point in the story, it doesn't sound like God is caring for this young man.  He seems in all accounts - forgotten!

Finally, he is called upon to interpret the Pharaoh's dream and because of what he has interpreted he is put second in command to Pharaoh to help save people from the coming famine.  It isn't until this point in Joseph's life that is all makes sense.  God has purpose in positioning Joseph at each step along the way.  God had the end game in view when all Joseph could see was the now portion of his life.

I too often look to my circumstances as the indicator of how my life is going.  One can always ask where God is in the midst of challenges and yet God is always working even when we don't see it or feel a void of his presence in painful seasons. 

God continued to speak to me through this story in the communion meditation at church the following day.  Nancy shared a story and challenged us to remember God is always in control. 

I then went to youth group where we are working through a lesson series on Eternity and was reminded by Francis Chan that our years on earth are just a tiny section of our life when compared with the eternity we will share with Jesus. 

As I prayed over this apparent lesson God was throwing in my lap, I suddenly had this picture in my head. 

I love to organize and purge and let me tell you my house definitely needs it!  I never finished being able to Konmari my house as my toddler would take off with my piles and it seemed this was not the season to do such a decluttering, but my own declutter story is not the point of this blog so let me continue with the visual. 

When I want to organize a cabinet or my closet, I first have to empty its contents.  Then I can clean out the area and begin to separate my piles: trash, donate, keep.  Once I have finished this I can sort what remains and place it properly in its new home.  The process necessitates some temporary disorder to bring about the desired outcome.  If you stop and look at my work when everything has been thrown about a room in chaos, you would question my methods, but if you wait, you will see the order behind the apparent mess. 

This picture found an instant connection to the life of Joseph and my own.  Joseph's life had purpose from day one and it never changed even when the security of his surroundings did.  God was at work at every stage in the process.  It was a bit disruptive in the middle, but it was with purpose.  There was some organizing that God was doing with his people and it meant temporary chaos.  True Joseph is more than the sweater thrown on my bed while I sort out the piles, but the principle still applies.

When we look in a particular moment we can miss the big picture, because a moment does not define our life's work.  We know the beauty of Joseph's story because we read it from beginning to end, but for Joseph he had to trust God even when it downright sucked to do so. 

This isn't the first time I've blogged about Joseph or even this lesson, but I am still in process with it so it continues to resonate with me. I think this is a timely word for this world.  Our country and our world are a mess, but I believe God is positioning and preparing us for the eternity we will spend with him!  It doesn't discount the impact of the tragedies we encounter, but we still have to trust and have faith - God is in control! 

Reflective Life - Leaving a Legacy

The passenger driver side window of my car is covered in fingerprints from, you guessed it, my three year old boy. He knows how to make an impression in so many ways and in this case its using his fingers to mark up my windows. It got me thinking about the marks we leave in life. We all leave our own fingerprints on the lives of the people around us and on the world we live in. The thing is we don't get to chose if we leave a mark, just the type of mark we leave. I don't know about you, but when I think about the word legacy, it brings with it a positive connotation, but that isn't true always true. A legacy by definition is "anything handed down from the past..." which means that a legacy includes the negative stuff too.

I was watching a preview for a show about World War 2 and I just pondered the thought, "Hitler left a legacy." Honestly, I would rather leave little positive legacy than the bombshell negative legacy that someone like Hitler left. When you think about the domino affect of Hitler's choices on the world as a whole its a scary image. A few years ago, I watched a video of the Germans who walked through a death camp at the end of World War 2. They were in horror of what had happened there. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, well this video made the word count rival that of the number of stars in our universe. The Germans did not have a picture of what Hitler was doing to the Jews and those with special needs (and the list goes on) until it was over and they saw the aftermath.

Our actions have weight. How we interact with our own lives matters. I recently heard Francis Chan in a video entitled, "Rethinking Church" compare people in church as one goes to the movies verses going to the gym. One is an onlooker being entertained and the other a participant interacting in her environment. As I have delved into this thought, it occurred to me that this comparison also works for life in general. How many of us live our lives in a passive manner, just dealing with whatever crosses our path? We live as if we are in a movie theatre taking whatever the screen of live throws at us or being a victim being crushed under the daily assault of bad deals, put downs and devaluing interactions. What if we took more ownership of our lives, what if we looked at our life as a gym, building ourselves up, starting where we are? Our legacy isn't about being some great person, its about taking what we have and building on it. To do so we have to start where we are. Often we are too scared to take a deep look in our lives to even see where we stand and therefore don't have the tools to move forward.

Hitler wasn't a bad person because he was born evil. Hitler was a person that faced the hardship of life and allowed it to mold him into a man capable of massacre and cruelty. Had he instead taken control of his life and chosen to be better himself, he may have left a better legacy just as impactful but for the good of humanity. So what will your legacy be? Will you live your life in a passive manner or take control of what you can, face the reality of where you are and seek to be someone that can leave a fingerprint that will help bring healing into the world? The choice is yours. I choose to leave a legacy of healing and love.