Sending who where?

I go to New Church. And let me tell you how wonderful it is to go to New Church, to praise my New God with my New Brain. One of the most awesome things about New Church is the New Class I get to attend. It's led by one of my kinda guys. Dry sense of humor, always quick to see the irony in God's handiwork and so he thought it'd be cool to study Joseph. I was, most likely, 7 or 8 years old the last time I studied the story of Joseph.

Tonight I was jumping ahead to see what we'll be reading for Mark's class this Sunday. I read how Joseph hid his identity from his brothers, put the silver back into their grain sacks, told them to go home but return with the baby brother, and the quandary they all felt thinking that the baby son might not return if he was taken back to Egypt to see Joseph.

Eventually, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers. They were terrified when they realized it was Joseph, governor of all the land, and they knew what they had done to him so long ago.

Joseph comforts them by saying ...

Genesis 45:8 So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.

The words pierced my heart. Here Joseph is, 20 something years later, comforting the very men, his own brothers, who had hurt him so deeply. He could have killed them all with one quick nod. But what does Joseph say? "It was not you (the brothers) who sent me here, but God.

I think that maybe where I'm at today. Working through the pain, the consequences of sin (mine and others), grasping and clinging to a relationship with Christ....only to realize, that it wasn't Steve, or the divorce; it wasn't the legalism and judgements of the church that sent me here....it was God. How beautiful and deep is the love of God that He is with us every step of the way, every moment, every tear.

So then, it is God who sends me here.

God is good....God sends us where He wants us to go.