Even When We Can't See It

What do we do when life refuses to follow the script we have written for it? In Genesis 48, we find ourselves standing in a room heavy with both grief and glory, watching a dying patriarch make some of the most unexpected moves in all of scripture. Jacob, a man whose entire life was marked by striving, scheming, and wrestling, arrives at his final chapter with something he did not always possess: a settled, unshakeable trust in the faithfulness of God. The central lesson woven through this passage is both simple and profound. The way forward may be uncertain, but the faithfulness of God never is. We watch Jacob adopt two foreign-born boys and elevate them to full heirs of the covenant, a stunning picture of how God takes those who are outsiders and brings them fully into his family by no merit of their own. We see a father embrace the son he thought was lost forever and process, in real time, the overwhelming goodness of a God who gave back more than was taken. And we witness a nearly blind old man cross his hands in defiance of tradition to bless the younger over the firstborn, not out of confusion, but out of clarity. Jacob could see what the second most powerful man in Egypt could not. When we are gripped by our own expectations of how things should go, we risk missing the very movement of God right in front of us.