Two Wild Passages

Two of the most emotional passages in Scripture are extremely happy ones.  Things were so good–so wonderfully happy–that it was hard to believe they were actually happening. Both involved one person. God met this man and his family in strikingly beautiful ways.  Do you know who it was?  

Drum roll…It was Joseph. You know the story. Joseph was beloved by his father but despised by his half-brothers. They told Dad Jacob that Joseph was killed by a wild animal but secretly sold him into slavery to traders going to Egypt. Fourteen years passed and–by God’s doing–Joseph rose to be the second most powerful man in Egypt.

God could have allowed Joseph to do well in Egypt and then go to heaven. He could have had him do well, but his dad, Jacob, could have met his Maker before they ever saw each other again. God could have made it so one or the other couldn’t ever be contacted again. Jacob, like Naomi, could have gone to a foreign land with no forwarding address and could never have been found. 

But God didn’t. He intended a wild, extraordinary super-blessing.

The emotions of the individuals involved were off the charts.

Two Events

Jacob loved his son Joseph. One day, he was told his beloved son died. It took him years to fully recover…if he ever did. Then, one day, life radically changed. It changed so much that life after this point was unrecognizable from life before it.

Jacob was living very ordinary days…very predictable ones. Then, the news came that rocked his universe. His son, whom he loved more than life itself, was alive. Not only was he alive, but he was also a second ruler over the known world. 

The impact on Jacob was like a lightning bolt from heaven hit him. Scriptures says it in three words; “Jacob was stunned.”  

STUNNED. Jacob couldn’t believe it. It was way, way, way too good. It couldn’t be true.

But it was. Jacob didn’t know it at the time, but God wrote him into one of the most unusual, most wonderful and most extraordinary stories of all time. The news was just the beginning.

Out of Control

Joseph had a whole lot of, “I don’t believe this is happening” going on right before his eyes at this juncture of his life. The events that were taking place were so unlikely and so beyond belief that it staggered him.  

There came moments for Joseph when the miraculous collided with the wonderful so radically that he almost burst. Scripture records it happening for two days. Both days, he wept out of control. 

The first was when he saw his only full brother, Benjamin. His childhood dreams were fully coming to pass. He was so moved with emotion on seeing Benjamin that he ran out of the room when he laid eyes on his brother for the first time in 14 years.  He was overwhelmed with powerful emotion.

Scripture records an extraordinary passage about what happened next: Joseph wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard him…” –Genesis 45:2

Joseph wasn’t weeping for sadness. He was exploding with emotion because what God just did was so unbelievable, so good and so wonderful that he could hardly handle the eruption of joy inside him.

Even More

A similar situation happened a few weeks later when Joseph and Jacob, his father, met. No doubt, he ran to his father. They hugged each other; they clung to each other… and wept “a long time.” – Genesis 46:29 

And things didn’t end there. It was the beginning of some pretty wonderful years where the hand of God powerfully rested on this little family. God worked wonders that set up a tidal wave of blessing that eventually spread to the entire earth affecting billions of people. And the effect is still in full operation to this day.

God and Super-Blessings

Does God do things today that explode people’s conceptions of what He can do and who He is?  Does God do things that rock peoples’ worlds with beauty that leaves them overwhelmed? 

Scripture records some beyond-marvelous words, “God is able to do exceedingly more…exceedingly abundantly more  than anything we can ask Him for …or anything we can even imagine….”  This passage speaks of God working more than we ever imagined He would.  Being overwhelmed with awe is the result. 

What happened to Joseph and Jacob certainly fits this bill. Neither of them ever thought that God would pull off what He did. It was completely off their radar. It was a wonder that never entered their imagination. The shepherds hardly knew where Egypt even was, much less ever dreamed of ruling it!

Thomas

Thomas had a moment of extreme emotion. He wanted in the deepest part of his being for Jesus to be alive. I don’t think it’s possible for us to imagine how greatly he wanted this to be true. He literally walked with Jesus.  He talked directly to Jesus more times than we can count. . He was right there and saw it all happen. What wouldn’t you give to have seen and heard what he did. 

Then, he firsthand witnessed everything end in the most tragic way imaginable. 

But it didn’t end there. Thomas heard that the unthinkable had happened. Jesus had risen from the dead. This was something so good that it shook him to the core. It was so incredibly good but so incredibly impossible. It couldn’t possibly be true–so he thought. In trying to deal with it, he declared, “Unless I put my hands in his wounds, I will not believe.”

Jesus loved Thomas.  He knew Thomas’ words that were spoken in secret. He knew the depths of his need and He crashed into Thomas’ world like a lion from heaven.

Jesus passed through walls and appeared to his very beloved Thomas out of nowhere. He looked him square in the eyes and addressed his own declaration, “Thomas reach here. Touch My hands, My side. Be not unbelieving but believing.” 

Thomas did, and he collapsed with a massive surge of emotion, barely able to get out the words, “My Lord and my God!”

All of life changed that day for Thomas because something too good to be true was true.

Blessed to be a Blessing

Renita is my very, very special wife, an incredible gift from the Lord to me. One of our prayers in writing this book is that the Lord would use it to bring others into shocking moments where they perceive the Lord in depths they never imagined– where God would move so powerfully and wonderfully that they would be stunned at what He does.

Our deep hope is that others would weep for joy at what new things He does–that they would collapse in exceedingly powerful moments, barely able to utter the words, “My Lord and my God!”

These actions of our God bless us beyond belief. They also make us conduits of the presence and life of God and hope in God to our children and to others. This means the world to us. 

UB-Something Beautiful…Something Good…

We have named our book Unexpected Beauty because of what happened one night to Renita and me.

She was in Texas and I was in California. We were texting back and forth marveling about what we were seeing God do in our lives…That’s putting it mildly. We were beyond-astonished, actually.

In the middle of our texting, Renita’s eye caught two words on either sides of the text. She messaged, “Don. Look above in the typing. See the two words, Unexpected and Beauty?  Put them together. These perfectly describe what has happened to us. God has brought completely unexpected beauty into our lives!”

There are times when the Lord shoots a word or a group of words deep into my heart. Unexpected beauty zinged really deep at that moment. These two words were the perfect expression from the Lord to us about the extraordinary things we were seeing Him do for us!

And this is exactly what overwhelmed Jacob and Joseph…and Thomas. God did wildly beautiful things…completely unexpected beautiful things. 

And this is what this book is all about…

God is meeting us in powerful and incredibly sweet and beautiful ways…over and over and over again.