Take a moment to read the entire chapter of Genesis 50 before reading the devotional below.
We’ve come to the end of the first book in the Bible, so we have seen God’s early involvement in the world. We’ve read about creation, sin entering the world, the flood that was a reset button, God’s promise to Abraham, and the start of Israel’s history. There’s much more to come throughout the entire Old Testament, with a period of about 400 years of silence before Jesus comes to earth in Matthew. Yesterday we saw a piece of the thread that shows how Jesus is the real point of the entire story.
Jacob dies after some time in Egypt, and Joseph and all his brothers take all their families back to their homeland to bury their father. If only they had stayed there, perhaps the Israelites would not have become enslaved for hundreds of years! In fact, Joseph himself can see after some time that their families will eventually need to leave Egypt and return to the land God promised to Abraham. Joseph stays faithful to God until the very end, never turning on his brothers or forgetting that God was the one who was directing his life.
Here’s your freedom for today:
What you cultivate in your mind is what will grow.
I’ve had a few relationships with elderly people during my life, and I have observed that age brings with it a decline in verbal inhibition. They say what they think, sometimes without the filter that had served them well earlier in life. I’ve heard some who speak bitterly or angrily, and I’ve heard others who seem to never stop talking about the blessings they’ve seen from God. Once you are old, it’s too late to decide who you want to be and what you want to be known for talking about. What you have invested in and thought about throughout your life will come out of your mouth when you are old. Joseph was repeating the same thing he’d said his whole life: God brought me to Egypt and had a good plan. He had thought it so many times before it was the only thing that would ever come out of his mouth. What are you cultivating in your thoughts today? If you lose some of your filters, what might come out of your mouth someday?