Most of us will never know what our last words will be. We don’t get to rehearse them. Jacob/Israel is dying. His last words are not a farewell but a commission. He gives his son, Joseph, a promise that awaits fulfilment. He releases Joseph into a story bigger than both of them. In a sense, we are all recipients of promises made by people who never lived to see them kept.
“Then Israel said to Joseph, “I am about to die, but God will be with youand take youback to the land of yourfathers. 22 And to you I give one more ridge of landthan to your brothers, the ridge I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow.” (Genesis 48 v 21-22)
The words of a dying man can be more important than at any other time.
There are many false reports of the dying words of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. But what is true and shared at his memorial service in 2011 by his sister, Mona Simpson, is this:
“Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve’s final words were: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”
In his final words to Joseph, Jacob is dying, but there is no self-pity. There is a promise and a gift.
“God will be with you,” he says. He releases Joseph into a future he will not live to see.
Then he gives him land that he actually doesn’t own. He had won it once by ‘sword and bow’, but now it is lost to the enemy. It is a strange gift, perhaps. He is passing on a promise that will outlast him. Even though at that moment he cannot see it, and he doesn’t have it to give, he says, “This land, this story, even though you cannot see it, is yours.”
This dying man still believes the best is yet to come.
This is a true legacy.
Missions Paul 