God Provides Abundant Grace for Grief that Lurks Beneath the Surface

Peacefully moving through a wedding and the reception that follows with four young children requires planning on the level of getting Hannibal over the Alps. Even so, we had almost made it through to the cutting of the cake and the socially acceptable early departure we had planned. My husband was making a second trip through the buffet line for a fresh supply of finger food, and I was supervising coloring projects and fun with small toys at our rowdy table when the emcee announced a song by the father of the bride.

The singing was off-key, the delivery was amateurish, and the song itself was hackneyed and cliché, so there was absolutely no reasonable explanation for the emotion that washed over me like a tidal wave slamming the shore. Realizing that I was not going to be able to finesse the tears, I used the dropped crayons and fallen toys as an excuse to disappear beneath the flowing tablecloth while I pulled myself together. Purposeful movement as a distraction broke the spell, and I recovered, but the experience left me ragged and cautious.

What had thrown my emotional switch and brought on the flood of tears?

The wounds within us are wily and unpredictable. They hold more power over us than we would ever care to acknowledge. Joseph, the Old Testament patriarch who was famous for his colorful coat and ambitious boyhood dreams knew well the deep trauma of abandonment and betrayal.

However, as second in command over the land of Egypt, he was every inch a man who was in charge of his life. Clean-shaven and well-oiled, he would have given the appearance of having moved on with gusto, of having put his dysfunctional Hebrew family behind him—along with any other disappointments and betrayals he had suffered. One thing was very clear:  he had not allowed a broken heart to prevent him from seizing every opportunity that had come his way.

Unexpected Grief

Funny, though, how past hurts have a habit of snagging our hearts in unexpected moments. My emotional tsunami at the wedding reception had its roots in the deep sadness around my own father’s alcoholism and mental illness. His poor decisions and hurtful behaviors were a dark backdrop to my childhood and, then, a threatening cloud of trouble until his death.

Even so, the stability of a lively faith had served as a firm foundation under all the family turmoil, and the gift of a loving husband who had embodied a new vision of fatherhood within our home convinced me that I had put the past behind me. Besides, I was a catechized woman, well aware of the importance of “lay[ing] aside every encumbrance.” I had experienced the truth of I Corinthians 5:17:  “the old things [have] passed away; behold, new things have come.” No wonder I was caught off guard when fragile props I was completely unaware of were kicked away by nothing more than a warm connection between a father and a bride whom I barely knew.  

Funny how past hurts have a habit of snagging our hearts in unexpected moments.

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God is Never Asleep at the Wheel

In Joseph’s family, dysfunction smoldered with fatherly favoritism but spread like wildfire underground until sibling rivalry turned murderous in its resentment. Joseph’s brothers reached a point where they could barely speak a civil word to him, and so the minute he was out of his father’s sight, they began scheming a way to be rid of him and his pretty colorful jacket once and for all:

 “When they saw him from a distance and before he came close to them, they plotted against him to put him to death. They said to one another, ‘Now then, come and let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; and we will say, ‘A wild beast devoured him.’”

Genesis 37:18-20

Thanks to the intervention of his oldest brother Reuben, Joseph was not killed, but while Reuben’s back was turned, his nine scheming siblings sold Joseph to a band of traders traveling toward Egypt. Their father Jacob believed the wild animal story and never fully recovered from his loss nor repented of his favoritism. He simply substituted Joseph’s younger brother Benjamin as the favored brother, and so the dysfunction continued in Canaan, while, in his new Egyptian home, Joseph landed as a slave, serving in the home of Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh’s guard.

Not for one moment is God ever asleep at the wheel, either in the buying and selling of a slave or in the assignment of a daughter’s family ties. Long ago, I learned that the years under the shadow of my father’s self-medication with liquid forgetfulness were tuition, carefully conceived in the heart of my Teacher as preparation for the life he had planned.

Ironically, Joseph, the self-starter rose to prominence in Potiphar’s home, partly because of his conscientious service, but mostly because it was the quickest route to Pharaoh’s prison! Falsely accused of a dalliance with Mrs. Potiphar, Joseph found himself, once again, a victim of injustice and out of control in a life turned upside down.

Forgotten–and then Remembered!

In spite of all evidence to the contrary, “the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him, and gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer” (Genesis 39:21). Once again, Joseph distinguished himself as a worker who did not need oversight. Once again, the LORD ensured that Joseph’s many abilities did not go to waste, even in a dark prison cell. He was given the opportunity to exercise his gift for interpreting dreams for a fellow prisoner, the king’s cupbearer, with a dream that foretold the man’s return to Pharaoh’s good graces and a release from prison.

Unfortunately, the cupbearer promptly forgot all about his friend Joseph the moment the dream-prophecy was fulfilled! Then, one morning, two years later Pharaoh came to the breakfast table looking as if he’d barely slept. Apparently, he had been standing by the river Nile in a frightful dream about starving cows that swallowed up sleek fat cattle and thin, blighted heads of grain that crowded out and ruined a crop of plump, healthy stalks. Smacking his forehead like the forgetful dunce he was, the cupbearer, at long last, remembered Joseph.

A quick bath, a shave, and a change of clothes made Joseph presentable for an audience with Pharaoh, and even in this high-pressure situation, Joseph was quick to give God credit for his ability to interpret dreams. He then went on not only to inform Pharaoh that his dream indicated seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine, but also to advise the ruler to take advantage of the years of plenty to plan, prepare, and provide for the years of want. It’s no surprise, given Joseph’s insight and Pharaoh’s great relief, that Joseph was immediately sent to human resources for new employee orientation and given a corner office from which he administered Egypt’s famine preparation initiative for the next seven years.

Joseph stayed busy, and he had a full life including a wife and children. The years that followed played out just exactly as Joseph had predicted.  Except… one day, ten bearded men showed up in the grain market with empty stomachs and empty grain bags looking for assistance from Egypt’s famine relief program.
Ten Canaanites
Ten sons of Jacob
Joseph’s older brothers
Quick to respond, Joseph put on his best poker face and gave no indication that he recognized them, but instead leveraged the situation to get a glimpse of baby brother Benjamin who had stayed behind with their father, Jacob.

God Paves the Way for Provision and Welcome

Joseph’s generous response to his estranged family provides ample evidence of a heart that had traveled all the way to forgiveness, even if it does appear that he is toying with his big brothers’ anxiety at times. In fact, the biblical record devotes three chapters to the twenty-four-hour waiting period before Joseph revealed his identity to his brothers. In that space, we are told that Joseph dissolved into tears at least three times, and in his case, there was no diving under the tablecloth for a quiet recovery!

Audible from the next room (Genesis 45:2), Joseph “wept aloud” as he revealed his identity to his slack-jawed band of brothers. In this moment, Joseph displays the weighty truth that has held his heart in faith through twenty-two years of waiting:

“I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. Now do not be grieved or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life… God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep you alive by a great deliverance. Now, therefore, it was not you who sent me here, but God.”

Genesis 45:4-8

Always with deliverance in his heart, God had sent Joseph on ahead of Jacob’s clan in order to pave the way for provision and welcome. In fact, the warm welcome into God’s family and the provision of forgiveness and God’s righteousness that flow from the gospel today have come to us through Christ who was born into the line of Jacob, the line preserved by God through Joseph’s assignment in Egypt. The following life requires an eternal perspective during moments when it appears that God is inactive—or worse, when it looks for all the world as if he is acting against us!  Waiting in hope requires a sinewy faith.

Joseph’s story is our story; his hope is our hope. Well-founded hope in the living God carries the child of God through seasons of sustained hardship, and yet the heart also needs time and opportunity to heal when it has been crushed.

Joseph’s story is our story; his hope is our hope. Well-founded hope in the living God carries the child of God through seasons of sustained hardship.

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As you heal, resist the temptation to look away from scriptural truth or scraps of memory that make you uncomfortable. Instead, pay attention to what disturbs you. Listen well to the revealing work of tears when they come.

I continue to pray for a sanctified curiosity about the losses that I have experienced and for courage to consciously remember moments that, ironically, I had once consciously tried to forget. Choosing compassion over bitterness, I discover that where I had slashed the words drunk and wasted, God revealed a broken man who was self-medicating and always falling short. Then He probed still deeper, and we wondered together, “Is it possible that some of my own sin patterns are evidence that I also self-medicate in my own way?”

Joseph’s God-centered view of his painful life experiences enabled him to choose compassion and hope over bitterness. Recording artist and songwriter Lecrae observed: “Fear believes God will get it wrong; bitterness believes he did.”[1]  An abiding faith that God will always get it right is powerful protection against the sin of bitterness.  

The One who “bore our grief and carried our sorrows” has a plan for my good even when all the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. (Isaiah 53:4) “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” is Joseph’s statement of faith in the sovereign power of a good God. (Genesis 50:19) These powerful and prophetic words could only have been spoken with authority and credibility as a follow-up to Joseph’s backstory of slavery and imprisonment.

By these same theological underpinnings, I am learning to embrace the narrative of my own life as both permission and responsibility to speak and to write words of hope and possibility into dark rooms.  God provides abundant grace for grief that lurks beneath the surface. He extends his strong hand of compassion and healing for the journey of faith that carries us through our wounds and into a story of redemption.

Holding You in the Light,

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[1] Keller, Tim, ed. Uncommon Ground. Thomas Nelson, 2020.

God provides abundant grace for grief that lurks beneath the surface. He extends his strong hand of compassion and healing for the journey of faith that carries us through our wounds and into a story of redemption.

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