May 31
Origin Story
The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. ––Romans 8:15-16
It’s crazy how many dysfunctional families there are in the Bible. Adam. David. Saul. One origin story that rivals all others has to be the family of Joseph. We know Joseph from his colorful coat, his miraculous rise in Pharaoh’s court, and how he saved his people from terrible drought. What we don’t hear a lot about is that before he was 17 his mother had died, his grandfather Isaac had died, and the woman who cared for him as a child, Deborah, had died. So, by the age of 17 he had experienced a lot of death. But here’s the amazing thing about him: Jospeh was still a spoiled brat.
That may sound like I’m joking, but I’m not. He truly was an entitled, arrogant kid. At the time that he was thrown into that empty cistern by his brothers, he was 17 years old and he had issues. Let’s pick the story up in Genesis 37:
Joseph, when he was seventeen years of age, was pasturing the flock with his brothers, while he was still a youth, along with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives. And Joseph brought back a bad report about them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his other sons, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a multicolored tunic. And his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers; and so they hated him and could not speak to him on friendly terms. ––Genesis 37:2-4
This is a messed-up family. I mean, you have polygamy going on. And as we all know, God is never okay with polygamy. Moses—who only had one wife, Zipporah, and then remarried after her death—makes this clear: “And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, so that his heart does not turn away. …” (Deuteronomy 17:17)
And though polygamy was never God’s idea, Joseph’s father, Jacob, had four wives (Leah, Rachel, and their handmaidens Bilhah and Zilpah). You think you have issues in your house? I mean, I work hard just to keep up with one wife! Add to that, of course, that Jacob had multiple sons who hated each other.
Suddenly, seen in this light, Joseph loses some of his stain-glass allure, right? I know some of you can relate to this because you come from really difficult families. I did.
And this is what I learned the hard way: It isn’t where you come from, it’s what you do with where you come from. It’s your response to the issues that hit you in the face. Brother, everybody gets punched in the face in life. Everybody does. What do you do with it? Some people get back up and grow, and other people give up. So, the question really is, what do you do when it’s hard? What do you do when you get slammed?
No matter how difficult your origin story was, it doesn’t define who you are today, and it definitely doesn’t define who you are in Christ. Like Joseph, we can choose to learn from the past in order to secure a better future. The choice is ours.
Father, help me to not be defined by my family of origin, no matter how dysfunctional it may have been. Thank You that I am now a part of Your eternal family, and that You are a Father who will never leave me.