Waiting

Dear Christa—

From Genesis to Now: Gen. 43:15-18

Maybe you’re like me: I’m often trying to second guess peoples’ motives. I can wonder why I’m’ being regarded a certain way. Sometimes I never know. And, sometimes I’ve just plain misjudged a situation. Some of us naturally see people’s actions toward us as positive and others of us tend to conjure negative motives of others. Most of us probably live somewhere in between the two extremes.

However, for Joseph’s brothers, who often had self-seeking motives themselves, they are expecting the worst from this strange, powerful man they must deal with in Egypt. When they are sent to Joseph’s house, they assume payback day for sending their brother into slavery has arrived. Genesis 43:18 tells us they thought “he [Joseph] wants to attack us, and overpower us and seize us as slaves and take our donkeys.”

Making them slaves is one thing, but wanting their donkeys? Well, that’s just makes me want to laugh. Why in the world would someone as powerful as Joseph care about their donkeys? Guilt has a way of clouding our thinking. And, often we don’t think things through in a logical, rational way in times of stress.

We can find ourselves scared. We can find ourselves cornered. And, we can conjure up any number of ridiculous ideas, especially if we tend to live our life primarily focused on ourselves.

It’s a warning to not jump to conclusions. Sometimes, we need to wait and see. Most of the time, that’s what we’ll end up doing anyway. We wait to see where the hand of God moves. The questions is “How do we wait?” We can wait in anxiety or in trust.

I won’t tell you how I generally wait.

—the parishioner who doesn’t do anything