Joseph's Tears

(Italicized Scripture is Genesis 45:1-8 in the NLT)

The tension grew strong enough to break something inside Joseph.  The tears that were on their way disintegrated his sloppy pretend game as he looked at his fearful, confused brothers.  Joseph could stand it no longer.  There were many people in the room, and he said to his attendants, "Out, all of you!"  So he was alone with his brothers when he told them who he was.  The moment he'd pined for as a slave for 22 years had finally come.  Then he broke down and wept.  He wept so loudly the Egyptians could hear him, and word of it quickly carried to Pharaoh's palace.  All at once his mind used tears to hammer out the pain of slavery, the deeper pain he saw in his brothers' guilt, the goodness of God to hurt him so deeply, and the surrender to that good God who hurts to save.  Tears brought to outward hysteria but inward healing.

"I am Joseph!" he said to his brothers, feeling the foreign familiarity of his Hebrew name.  "Is my father still alive?  He looked around at these men.  Before their faces showed the fear of impending slavery, now he'd struck the harder blow by revealing their 22-year-old covered up sin.  With one sentence he'd forced a light on the chain in their darkest place, and they were undone.  But his brothers were speechless!  They were stunned to realize that Joseph was standing there in front of them.  Joseph's compassion grew warm for these brothers and his tears shallowed enough for him to speak.

"Please come closer," he said to them, growing even stronger in his love for these men.  So they came closer, bewildered and without any walls left inside.  And he said again, "I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into slavery in Egypt.  But don't be upset, and don't be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place.  It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives.  This famine that has ravaged the land for two years will last give more years, and there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.  God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors.  So it was God who sent me here, not you!  And He is the one who made me an adviser to Pharaoh--the manager of his entire palace and the governor of all Egypt.  That day Joseph finally got to communicate the work of forgiveness and perspective that God had been forging in him for decades.  Now the Lord was turning to the brothers to begin his healing work, first by saving them from the famine, and then by being gracious enough to shine His light on the sin that held them captive for so long.  Would they respond by walking blinkingly into the blinding light or by running from it?  How would you have responded?