There are many books on how to be successful and how to gain in this world. Not many people in the world will get to read those books, and if they did, it wouldn’t relate to their situation.
As I have been reading this next passage and thinking about Jacob’s death, I have had a text conversation with two men, one from Indonesia and the other in Africa. The Indonesian Pastor buried his teenage son not so long ago and is now facing the difficult and expensive journey to take his wife for cancer treatment. The African man is mourning his wife’s death and is making steps forward in a completely new chapter of his life.
Faith is not only measured by what has been gained. It is also measured by whom we have lost along the way and by what we do in the aftermath of their deaths. Suffering accompanies and reveals faith.
“Joseph threw himself on his father and wept over him and kissed him. 2 Then Joseph directed the physicians in his service to embalm his father Israel. So the physicians embalmed him, 3 taking a full forty days, for that was the time required for embalming. And the Egyptians mourned for him seventy days. 4 When the days of mourning had passed, Joseph said to Pharaoh’s court, “If I have found favor in your eyes, speak to Pharaoh for me. Tell him, 5 ‘My father made me swear an oath and said, “I am about to die; bury me in the tomb I dug for myself in the land of Canaan.” Now let me go up and bury my father; then I will return.’” 6 Pharaoh said, “Go up and bury your father, as he made you swear to do.” (Genesis 50 v 1-6)
There are times to weep, to mourn your loss and to do all that within the protocol of your culture, perhaps. For Joseph, this was seventy days of waiting for the period of mourning to be over.
These days do pass.
There are times to do what you promised. To keep your word and honour commitments made. A life of faith is not only measured by great achievements and what has been gained. But it is also measured by what and who we have lost along the way.
The conversation with the man grieving his wife’s death has filtered through this passage I have been reading. In the eyes of many, the man has been very successful. He has had many victories and years of plenty. His faith is not only measured by these things. It is also measured and is so now in the faithfulness of his life in loss.
That faithfulness looks like this: weep when you need to weep. Wait through the days that must be waited through. Then get up and keep your word; do what you said you would do.
That is what love looks like when it outlasts loss. This is what tests faith when those we love are taken from us.
Missions Paul 