Is your family a train wreck?

It’s that time of year again where I read a familiar passage and try to imagine what it must have been like. My Bible reading plan does not always finish with as many checkmarks as I would like, but towards the end of Genesis, chapter 45 gets me every time. (Trying out an English Septuagint from Lexham this go’round):

And he let out a cry with weeping, and all the Egyptians heard it, and it was heard in the house of Pharaoh. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph, your brother, who was sold into Egypt. Is my father still alive?” And his brothers were not able to reply to him, for they were troubled.
Genesis 45:2–3 (LES2)

The last time they saw him he was sold into slavery; they hated him for saying that he dreamed one day he would rule over them. Now, they are bowing before him, hoping to get food during a famine. Up to this point they felt hungry. Now instantly, “I am your brother,” they felt emotions, adrenaline, confusion, amazement, anxieties, worry, guilt, and hundreds of other emotions we can’t imagine flood their minds in a microsecond that must have felt like eternity.

And when you’d expect for anyone to point a finger of blame at them, he pointed them to the God who was with him in the palace and in the prison. “God sent…” “God made…” “God did…” “God…” “God…” “God…” “God…” “God…” “God…”

“You plotted evil against me; God plotted good for me.”

Christian, you might have a perfect family, a picture-perfect family, a normal family, a struggling family, or a family that has gone off the rails. You may know your fifth cousin’s middle name, or you may see a blood relative at the gas station, try not to stare, and think, “If they only knew how much DNA we share.” Whatever the case, the story of Joseph gives us hope…

Not hope that every family situation in this life will be fixed. It possibly won’t. In this story, we aren’t the innocent Joseph; we’re the guilty brothers. Yet, it shows us that there is one family God guarantees will never fall apart; the family line of the coming Redeemer. And in him, in the born, sinless, crucified, resurrected, ascended, and returning person of Jesus Christ, there is a family line with one better than Jospeh that isn’t falling off the rails—that family is being held with hands that were pierced with nails.