Genesis 48:1-22

Jacob is quite old and nearing death. The time has come for him to give his final blessings to his sons.

Jacob’s Blessings

Read

Joseph moved the boys, who were at their grandfather’s knees, and he bowed with his face to the ground. Then he positioned the boys in front of Jacob. With his right hand he directed Ephraim toward Jacob’s left hand, and with his left hand he put Manasseh at Jacob’s right hand. But Jacob crossed his arms as he reached out to lay his hands on the boys’ heads. He put his right hand on the head of Ephraim, though he was the younger boy, and his left hand on the head of Manasseh, though he was the firstborn.
(Genesis 48:12-14)

Reflect

When Joseph became a slave, Jacob thought he was dead and wept in despair (Genesis 37:34). But eventually God’s plan allowed Jacob to regain not only his son but his grandchildren as well. This dramatic turn of events shows that circumstances are never beyond God’s reach. Jacob regained his son. Job got a new family (Job 42:10-17). Mary and Martha regained their brother Lazarus (John 11:1-44). We need never despair because we belong to a loving God. We don’t yet know what good he may bring out of a seemingly hopeless situation.

Jacob included Joseph’s sons in his blessings. These verbal blessings were very important, carrying the weight of a “last will and testament.” Jacob surprised Joseph by giving Ephraim the greater blessing, even though he was younger. When Joseph tried to correct his father, Jacob refused to listen because God had told him that Ephraim would become greater. Then Jacob blessed Joseph, the son he thought he would never see again.

God often works in unexpected ways. He certainly did when he restored Joseph to his family. And when God chooses people to be part of his plans, he always goes deeper than appearance, tradition, or position. He sometimes surprises us by choosing the person that human reasoning sets aside.

Respond

God can use you to carry out his plans, even if you don’t think you have all the qualifications or face seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Look for how God can work through you and for you in every situation, even those that seem hopeless.

Streams in the Desert – May 25

So I endure all things for the sake of those chosen by God, that they too may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus and its eternal glory. (2 Tim 2:10)

If Job could have known as he sat there in the ashes, bruising his heart on this problem of Providence—that in the trouble that had come upon him he was doing what one man may do to work out the problem for the world, he might again have taken courage. No man lives to himself. Job’s life is but your life and mine written in larger text….So, then, though we may not know what trials wait on any of us, we can believe that, as the days in which Job wrestled with his dark maladies are the only days that make him worth remembrance, and but for which his name had never been written in the book of life, so the days through which we struggle, finding no way, but never losing the light, will be the most significant we are called to live.
—Robert Collye

Who does not know that our most sorrowful days have been amongst our best? When the face is wreathed in smiles and we trip lightly over meadows bespangled with spring flowers, the heart is often running to waste.

The soul which is always blithe and gay misses the deepest life. It has its reward, and it is satisfied to its measure, though that measure is a very scanty one. But the heart is dwarfed; and the nature, which is capable of the highest heights, the deepest depths, is undeveloped; and life presently burns down to its socket without having known the resonance of the deepest chords of joy.

“Blessed are they that mourn.” Stars shine brightest in the long dark night of winter. The gentians show their fairest bloom amid almost inaccessible heights of snow and ice.

God’s promises seem to wait for the pressure of pain to trample out their richest juice as in a wine-press. Only those who have sorrowed know how tender is the “Man of Sorrows.”
—Selected

Thou hast but little sunshine, but thy long glooms are wisely appointed thee; for perhaps a stretch of summer weather would have made thee as a parched land and barren wilderness. Thy Lord knows best, and He has the clouds and the sun at His disposal.
—Selected

“It is a gray day.” “Yes, but dinna ye see the patch of blue?”
—Scotch Shoemaker

DIGGING DEEPER 05/25/2015 We HONOR Our Soldiers I Like Veteran – I Like Giving Excerpt from Fearless, by Eric Blehm When Adam Brown woke up on March 17, 2010, he didn’t know he would die that night in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan—but he was ready. Seven thousand miles away, in a suburb of Virginia Beach, his ten-year-old son, Nathan, was worried about him. From the moment he’d opened his eyes that morning, he felt something bad was going to happen to his daddy, but he kept it to himself, rolled out of bed, and got ready for school. It was Saint Patrick’s Day, and he made sure to wear something green so he wouldn’t get pinched. On a previous deployment, Adam had written in his journal to both Nathan and Savannah, Nathan’s seven-year-old sister, a letter they weren’t meant to see unless the worst happened: I’m not afraid of anything that might happen to me on this Earth because I know no matter what, nothing can take my spirit from me.… How much it pains me…to think about not watching my boy excel in life, or giving my little baby girl away in marriage.… Buddy, I’ll be there, you’ll feel me there when you steal your first base, smash someone on the football field, make all A’s. I’ll be there for all of your achievements. But much more, Buddy, I’ll be there for every failure. Remember, I know tears, I know pain and disappointment, and I will be there for you with every drop. You cannot disappoint me. I understand! I will be there for you Adam Brown did understand what it meant to disappoint, to feel the shame he’d experienced on a hot, humid August afternoon years earlier when his parents had him arrested. “It’s time for you to face what you’ve done,” his father had told him in 1996, just before Adam was handcuffed and escorted to the backseat of the Garland County sheriff’s cruiser. When the deputy slammed the car door shut, Adam watched his mother’s legs buckle, and as she collapsed, his dad caught her and held her tightly against him. She began to cry, and Adam knew he had broken her heart. That vision—of his mother sobbing into his father’s chest—would haunt him for the rest of his life, but it also sparked the journey that defined who he would become. Officially known as a Chief Special Warfare Operator (SEAL), Adam Brown was one of the most respected Special Operations warriors in the U.S. Navy. Before May 2011, details about Adam’s unit—popularly called SEAL Team SIX—were neither confirmed nor commented on by the Pentagon and the White House. One night changed everything; the wave of publicity following Osama bin Laden’s death thrust the little-known unit into the spotlight. While prepping his equipment for his next mission, Adam folded the Arkansas flag his brother, Shawn, had given him. He always carried it into battle, tucking it proudly between his body armor and his uniform. Every SEAL who encountered Adam Brown knew in short order where he was from. He loved his home state right down to the dirt. “It is the one state in our country that can sustain itself,” he’d tell you while explaining his Arkansas Bubble Theory. “Y’all could put a bubble over it, cut us off from importing anything from the rest of the world, and we would not only survive, we would eat well and prosper.” To read more about the courage, determination, and ultimate sacrifice of Adam Brown, one of SEAL Team SIX’s most legendary operators, check out the book FEARLESS, By Eric Blehm