the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 1 of 5
Genesis 44:18-34
Joseph’s purpose was to draw the thoughts of his brothers to the time more than twenty years before when, beside the pit, they had remained insensitive to his distress when he was begging them for mercy (Genesis 42:21). He also wanted to make them remember the grief of their old father when they had cruelly told him of Joseph’s death. And Joseph wants to see whether they are able now to understand the suffering of their young brother and of their father. Well, he succeeded in stirring their hearts. How touching it is to hear Judah speaking of their aged father and their young brother, the son of his old age!
What lessons this teaches us too! We should put ourselves in the other person’s place, understanding their joys and particularly their sorrows. Still more, we should enter in spirit into the Father’s thoughts of love for His Son, into His grief when He saw His beloved Son in the hands of wicked men and when He heard His cry and could not reply to Him. Finally we should try to enter a little into the suffering of the Son when He was carrying the weight of our sins under divine judgment and when in infinite distress of soul, He went through the experience of being forsaken by God for us. Are we not often sadly without feeling on these matters with which the Spirit tries to occupy us?
