Homily for 17 Mar 2017

17 Mar 2017

Joseph’s brothers had intended to kill him, but instead they sold him for twenty pieces silver to make some quick money.  And, yet, our psalm today proclaims, “Remember the marvels the Lord has done!”  It’s hard to see exactly what marvelous things God was doing there in the story of Joseph and his brothers.

Of course, we might say the same thing about events in our own lives.  We run into financial difficulties, or a family member becomes very ill, or some other trial comes our way.  And we wonder: “Where is God in all this?”  And our psalm today still can sound out of place: “Remember the marvels the Lord has done!”  But what marvelous things is God doing as we suffer the trials of life?

In the psalm, though, we eventually come to see exactly what God was doing.  He inspired Joseph’s masters to let him go.  And those same slave drivers propelled Joseph to take a leadership role in the community.  And Joseph turned the fortunes of all around for the better.  Joseph needed to be taken away as a slave, so that he could be released into that community, and bring them God.  That’s the marvelous thing the Lord was doing.  He hadn’t abandoned Joseph at all.

And God does not abandon us either.  In the trials of our lives, God is still there.  God is still doing his “marvelous” things.  But we usually can’t see it until God is done doing what he’s doing.  And so, what’s left for us but to have faith that God is, indeed, at work in the present, in the trials we face today.  And then, someday, we can look back at see more clearly that, yes, God was at work.  The Lord did do marvelous things for me.

But that takes faith, and it takes time.  May God increase within us those gifts of faith and patience, because without them we’ll never be able to see the marvelous things the Lord is doing.