Detail

"God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth," Genesis 45:7.

Perspective. Point of view. Frame of reference. Vantage point. Interpretation. So how do we see the vagaries that have taken place in our lives? Lots of people know the story of Joseph in the Bible: a father's openly favored child of a dozen boys, sold into slavery by those older brothers, his master's wife's lies about his advances to her, thrown in prison and left there to rot. Forgotten. Years pass. Next scene, second-in-command to the king of Egypt. Joseph recasts his whole life's melodrama from a brat's self-centered it's-all-about-me world, to a God-ward view of providence and grace. It's about God's deep work in a deeply broken world.

We, brothers and sisters, develop perspectives away from sheer survival conceits in life's chance events, to mature recognition of an intimate God preserving his people for a kingdom. And, awestruck together, we confess anew God at work in the detail of our histories.