Daily Good News – God’s Good Intentions

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Jul 17, 2015 1217

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, to accomplish what is now being done; the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20)

When Jacob’s ten eldest sons arrived in Egypt to buy grain, Joseph, their younger sibling whom they had sought to destroy twenty years before, now had his tormentors in his grasp. He found ways to remind them of their long-secret crime, so the guilt of their jealousy and violence was dredged up, and they were forced to relive it.

“Didn’t I tell you not to sin against the boy?” cried Reuben to his brothers. “Now we must pay for his blood.” Finally, Joseph identified himself to them, and they were terrified. They were sure that they were about to be consumed by an unstoppable law of retribution. Joseph saw otherwise. He felt that good would come from the bad deeds done.

What is your interpretation of the events of your life? If things are going well for you, do you suppose you are being rewarded? If everything appears to be against you, do you think that your chickens are coming home to roost; that the universe is conspiring to do you in?

It is a fact that sometimes we reap some reward for our good or bad deeds. But the law of sowing and reaping is not absolute. Something greater is directing the course of our life. Ultimately, the world is not under the control of the evil that we do, nor of the good we may achieve. The world is steered by God. Even events that are wicked, unjust, and painful can be drafted into service by God and forced to contribute to his purposes. God is greater than all evil: that is the message of the Cross. The perpetrators of that terrible wrong believed they were ‘taking care of business’. But the initiative was stolen from them, and God made the Cross his.