As a child, I remember being engrossed by the sight of flies beating themselves to death on the stained glass windows during the morning sermon. Nothing to learn there, but somehow it kept me from hearing much from the preacher.
Then there was the time in junior high that my stomach WOULD NOT stop growling during the evening service. I was sitting with the youth group, and it was like the pew was a sounding board for whatever gastrointestinal gymnastics my guts were performing that day. Let's just say humiliation does not inspire spiritual focus when you are 14.
Another memorable service was ruined by a dried up booger dangling from the nose of the guy in front of me. It kept going in and coming out with every breath he took and amazingly managed to hang on through the entire sermon! Not the most interesting show I've ever watched, but it managed to keep me from taking a single note.
Then there were the years where I was trying to keep babies from squawking and jabbering during key points of the message. Paci? Bottle? Book? Car keys? Gum wrapper? Dryer lint? I was the Harry Houdini of diaper bag conjuring tricks. But as a result, my sermon notebook stayed clamped shut (and covered with Cheerios) at the bottom of my purse.
After that came the season where one toddler or another spent an entire hour doing circles on my lap, alternately pulling down my shirt and hiking up my skirt as he struggled to see what was happening at both the front and the back of the sanctuary simultaneously.
More recently there was the process of introducing newly arrived foster children to the concept of sitting still for more than 5 minutes. That came with lots of frantic shushing, hundreds of broken crayons, countless coloring pages, and regular parental dives across and under pews to snatch after escapees...
...and tantrums.
Ahh, tantrums! Those memorable events which usually ended in me leaving the sanctuary dripping with sweat and carrying the equivalent of a hot, angry octopus under my arm while at the same time pretending that my skirt wasn't on sideways and my church face hadn't cracked off and rolled under the pew.
Not much I can tell you about the sermons from those Sundays, I'm afraid.
These days, I have no excuse and yet...distractions still happen sometimes.
Sunday evening our pastor was talking about Joseph and I was listening intently.
And then suddenly I noticed my ring.
It is nothing remarkable--just a modest garnet set in filigreed silver, made sometime in the 1920's. I just happened to be sitting in a certain place in a certain pew at our church such that the overhead lights caught the flat, upper facet of the stone and flashed a pure, bright beam at my eye.
After it had happened a few times I caught myself staring at this brilliant, flawless surface, mesmerized. I moved my hand to move the light and watched it glide over the stone, illuminating the deep red of the garnet until the rays broke and refracted into smaller beams at the edges. The light looked like liquid on the stone, impossibly smooth and perfect--and for once, a distraction became a perfect illustration for the pastor's message.
Facets.
Cut with calculated precision from a rough stone in order to bring out the latent beauty of the raw material. It occurred to me that the top of my ring is just one of many facets on the jewel. There are more underneath and on the sides and they all work together to make the stone radiate the greatest quantity and quality of light and color, setting off the pure beauty of the gem.
Humans have facets too--attitudes, aptitudes, and attributes, cut and polished by the circumstances of their lives. I believe that every human being arrives with all the lovely potentiality of the Hope diamond, but that unlike stones, we have some choice in the matter of how and by whom we are cut.
The cutting will come, but the question is whether it will happen under the loving hand of an omnipotent God, or via the random hackings of a cold, dark world. Some people choose the latter and are never shaped into anything remotely beautiful or useful. Some people shake an angry fist at the universe and choose to cut themselves.
But others...others gradually relax in the hands of an all-knowing and benevolent God, submitting to the shaping which will bring them to perfect beauty in the end--and sometimes only at the end. (This is what the world cannot understand since it sees the end as just an end and not as an incomparably bright beginning.)
These bright gems--the ones who submit to be carved, polished, and even cut very deeply by a Master Craftsman--these can be made to shine in magnificent brilliance because they are in the hands of One who knows each jewel intimately and can fully realize the unique potential in every living stone.
Consider the faceting of Joseph--the theme of Sunday's message. He was the favorite son of a favored father, a boy taken from a life of privilege...and thrown into a pit. (Genesis 37)
He listens while his brothers discuss whether they will kill him or sell him as a slave. He begs for his life, the horror growing larger and larger in his mind as he considers the possibilities.
Money changes hands and he is led away in chains, his family and all he has ever known becoming a distant speck in a vast desert.
A deep cut is made and his comfortable old life falls away.
He rises to a position of authority in Potipher's house--the handsome house steward for Pharaoh's captain of the guard. And then comes a bored wife and a false accusation and Joseph is plunged again into the depths of disfavor, spending several years in prison. (Genesis 39)
Cut.
His ability to interpret dreams for a royal cup-bearer earns a chance at release. The cup-bearer promises to tell the pharaoh of Joseph's remarkable gift...but becomes intoxicated by his new-found freedom and forgets his old friend.(Genesis 40)
More years pass. Cut.
A second round of dreams is deciphered by Joseph--this time for Pharaoh himself--resulting in Joseph's release and ultimately, his rise to the second in command over Egypt.
The shards and dust begin to blow away, and a lovely surface begins to shine--one that is free of the pride, arrogance, and complacency that once plagued him.
His heart begins to heal, and upon the birth of his sons he gives them names which mean, "God has made me forget all my trouble in all my father's household," and "God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction." (Genesis 41)
And then, just as the rawness of the wounds from his past are healing, his brothers come to him to beg for food during the famine Joseph had predicted, and all the painful emotions and tenuous footing of his family relationships comes back full force as he faces them again. (Genesis 42)
Are they still the same, cruel, bitter men they once were? Or has the God of Abraham been faceting them all this time as well?
Joseph tests his brothers...and waits...and tests...and waits...requiring one of the brothers who had betrayed him all those years ago to sit in an Egyptian prison while the others go back home and try to convince their aged father to let his youngest son--the only other son from Joseph's beloved mother--return to Egypt with them.
And Jacob says "NO! Over my dead body, NO!"
And they all wait some more. And food runs out and bellies grow hungry, and Simeon and Joseph wait in Egypt, and wonder. (Genesis 43)
They wait long enough for the brothers to have made two round trips (of over 200 miles one way) before Jacob finally relents and sends his sons back with Benjamin to retrieve Simeon...and then finally, finally Joseph sees that they are changed and different men. (Genesis 44)
Nice story and it only took 13 chapters and 15 minutes to read it.
But to live it.
It took a thousand, thousand lifetimes because that is what faceting does. It hurts. And it multiplies hours and turns moments into months. And this story is so full of pain because it had to be.
Pain changes us. Cutting, grinding, searing, shaving hours off our sleep and (sometimes) years off our lives. Taking us from one place to another place entirely.
And for what?
For us...if we let it be so. It is what happens to jewels to make them beautiful in the hand of a master craftsman. Facets are cut into blocks of stone and suddenly beauty that no one but the jewel maker could have imagined is revealed in brilliant, flashes to an astonished world.
Just think of the faceting that had to occur to bring Joseph from a proud, tactless, hated boy to a wise, forgiving, humble leader.
It takes so little time to read, but it happened to him as it happens to all of us, in slow agonizing minutes--one painful cut after another.
It happened as he begged his brothers for his life from the bottom of a well, as he left a pampered, cherished upbringing for the harsh uncertainties of slavery, as he faced his arrest and imprisonment among a cruel and capricious people, as he waited forgotten years in a dungeon, as he counted the long days to see if his brothers would betray him yet again.
How many nights did he face the real possibility of death? How many mornings did he awake to a day full of question marks? How often did he weep for the loss of his father and ache for the familiar faces of his family in a strange land?
Why would God make Joseph wait so long and endure so many false starts before he gets his family back?
The Bible promises that, " God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28)
We know that "nothing can separate us from the love of Christ" and that "His mercy is from everlasting to everlasting." (Romans 8:35, Psalm 103:17)
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary elucidates, "That is good for the saints which does their souls good. Every providence tends to the spiritual good of those that love God; in breaking them off from sin, bringing them nearer to God, weaning them from the world, and fitting them for heaven. When the saints act out of character, corrections will be employed to bring them back again."
I don't believe in a God who wastes hardship in the lives of His people. All through the Bible and all through my own life I have seen Him working with patient strokes, making judicious cuts, taking exactly the time required to bring out another facet which will reflect His glory.
In Joseph's story, his brother Judah needed those long years to grow from a man who cared less than nothing about his little sibling and scarcely more than that for his father at the beginning of the narrative. He is heartless and mercenary, driven by lust and pride--willing to not only sell his brother, but to order his own daughter-in-law to be burned after she is found to be pregnant (by him!) (Genesis 38)
And then come long years and fear and pain and humiliation, and he is transformed to a son who freely offers HIMSELF as a slave in his little brother's place, out of his deep concern for his father's feelings for the boy.
He is a heart transformed--a man now worthy of the blessing of God and of his father, Jacob. (Genesis 49)
How about Jacob's own faceting at the hand of God, bringing him round from a conniving deceiver to a limping, humbled, patriarch of nations? Jacob "the supplanter" becomes Israel, "saved by God".
Jacob the manipulator was allowed to live in the rare air of bereavement, fear, silence, uncertainty, and loss in order to heal him from the fatal poison of his pride.
I found it interesting that God is recorded as speaking directly to Jacob on many occasions during his life, including once as he finally heads toward Egypt to be reunited with Joseph.
What about all those years when Jacob was wondering and grieving and struggling with his unanswered questions? Why didn't God speak then as He had in the past?
He could have popped down and said, "Hey, Jacob, remember that boy you thought was dead? He's not. In fact, he's ruling Egypt right now. You'll all be together again in the end, so relax, son! I've got this covered."
But He didn't speak, because for some reason, Jacob the humble Hebrew shepherd needed that silence to cut and polish and refine him before he rose to stand before his son and the pharaoh of Egypt.
And what about this pharaoh? Even he shows evidence of faceting in his evolution from "god over all of Egypt" to man who all but turns the keys to the kingdom over to a former Hebrew slave. In the end this mighty ruler even deigns to lower his head and receive a quiet blessing from the hand of an old Hebrew shepherd. Who knows what God is doing with each of us?
All around me right now I am watching precious people--jewels--be cleaved along the planes where they are weakest. It is a hot, hard, dirty business. Minutes, hours, questions, tears, pain, uncertainty. The process is not beautiful, but these souls are being cut and shaped, polished and set where they can best reflect the light, fire, and beauty they were created to show.
I am seeing it every day before my eyes, and I am amazed.
Joseph's story ends with him bringing his entire family together again at a time when their hearts were ready to receive the forgiveness that he was ready to offer.
When at last his brothers were gathered before him he said, " 'Come close to me.' When they had done so, he said, 'I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
"So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. Now hurry back to my father and say to him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says: God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; don’t delay. You shall live in the region of Goshen and be near me—you, your children and grandchildren, your flocks and herds, and all you have'." (Genesis 45)
I wonder as he watched his family settle in to Goshen and reflected on the years that had passed, if he blessed the day that brought him out of himself and into the place where he could truly shine.
I wonder if we can find the grace to do the same?
My heart goes out to so many precious people tonight--waiting anxious minutes, dragging one weary foot in front of the other, flooding their pillows with tears, lifting earnest prayers toward quiet skies.
Take heart, Dear Ones! You are beautiful to God, and in His hands I am seeing you sparkle and shine like the diamonds you are.
************
When cometh, when He comethTo make up His jewels,
All His jewels, precious jewels,
His loved and His own.
Like the stars of the morning,
His brightness adorning,
They shall shine in their beauty,
Bright gems for His crown.
He will gather, He will gatherThey shall shine in their beauty,
Bright gems for His crown.
The gems for His kingdom;
All the pure ones, all the bright ones,
His loved and His own.
Who love their Redeemer,
Are the jewels, precious jewels,
His loved and His own.
Like the stars of the morning,
His brightness adorning,
They shall shine in their beauty,
Bright gems for His crown.
They shall shine in their beauty,
Bright gems for His crown.
