Image: a close-up view of a train coupler connecting two cars.
I knocked on the white painted door of my girlfriend’s apartment. No one knew I was coming. One of Wendy’s roommates opened the door. It was Charlotte. She was the loud one. She screamed.
“Well, hello, Mr. Successful!”
Charlotte was an opera student, one of the true soprano divas at the university—though not the sort of diva you avoid. Charlotte was charming and hilarious and adorable. A funny, whacky, true friend and a flighty free spirit.
I blushed at the comment. I shook my head side-to-side. I smiled an embarrassed grin. What could I say? I was tongue-tied.
“So what do you have to say for yourself?”
I shrugged. “I dunno.”
“You’ve got the Midas touch. Everything you touch turns to gold!” I stepped into the apartment. Charlotte closed the door and began counting on her fingers. “So, you won a spot in the singing group and a scholarship. Then you win Best of Show in the art show. And then they cast you in some Shakespeare play? And I bet you made the Dean’s List again, too huh?” She laughed. “People like you make me sick.”
“Thank you.” I smiled. She didn’t mean it. Charlotte was so sweet and encouraging.
“But you know, I’m not really that successful.”
“What—!”
“Well, I mean this is the only week of my whole life that has ever been like this, believe me. I have had so many bad weeks.”
“Sure you have.”
“No, seriously. If you knew me better, you’d be calling me ‘Mr. Failure.’ Or maybe, ‘Mr. Average.’ This is just one great week that balances out a bunch of bad weeks.”
It was true. I knew myself. I was no ‘Mr. Successful.’ But I had certainly had an amazing week. It was an incredible few days.
Have you ever had a time like that? –A day or a week where everything you touched turned to gold? I bet–like me–you have had the opposite—one of those weeks where everything you touched seemed to fall to the ground and shatter?
I remember a time not long ago when our family had a serious problem every day for a month. The dishwasher broke down. The washing machine went out. The car needed a new alternator. The horse was injured. The dog got worms. My wife had a medical problem. I had to race off to the dentist with a broken tooth. These things went on and on for thirty days. I found myself waking up in the morning wondering what would go wrong that day. It was the worst string of bad luck. My thoughts grew cynical: Give us this day our daily disaster.
God can cause you to have favor. And He can remove that favor. (And sometimes crazy things just happen.)
“And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people” Exodus 11:3.
God gave His people and their leader Moses great favor in the eyes of the Egyptians and in turn, the Egyptians were generous, giving the Hebrews gold and jewelry for their journey “and thus, they plundered the Egyptians” Exodus 12:36.
I have often heard Christians praying that God would give them favor. Give us favor in the eyes of the job interviewer. Give us favor in the eyes of our clients. Give us favor in the eyes of the HR folks. Give us favor in the eyes of our customers. These are perfectly good prayers. God enjoys blessing His people and He wants us to come to Him with our requests.
But why did God bless the Hebrews? Why did He give them such favor that the Egyptians sent them away with gold and jewelry in their luggage? Did the Hebrews deserve it? The Bible does not say that[1].
In fact, the Bible gives no indication that the Hebrews deserved blessings of any kind, other than perhaps relief from slavery. It is true that they suffered under cruel taskmasters. “God heard their groaning … God saw the people of Israel –and God knew” Exodus 2:24-25.
I love that: AND GOD KNEW.
God came to Moses and said, “I have seen the affliction … and have heard their cry … I know their sufferings” Exodus 3:7-8.
God’s people were suffering and God was compassionate. The suffering was cruel and God ended it by rescuing them. But riches? Did they deserve riches that they would melt into a bronze calf in a matter of days?
I don’t think so. If you read the account that follows, these newly freed slaves are one of the laziest, bitterest, unhappiest generations in the Bible. They would require constant attention and teaching from Moses and from God Himself. Many would be struck down for their idolatry and disobedience. An entire generation would wander the wilderness for forty years, dying off without seeing the Promised Land.
These were not people who had somehow earned God’s favor.
But God bestowed His favor on them anyway.
Why? Because it suited God’s purposes.
Don’t focus on what you may or may not deserve. Merit is not the point. We are to do our best, to love the Lord, follow the word, and be holy as He is holy. But God does not promise to bless good Christians or to curse the bad. Do we reap what we sow? Absolutely.
But like two train cars that have been separated from each other, favor has been uncoupled from merit. God will have mercy on whom He will have mercy and He will have compassion on whom He will have compassion, Exodus 33:19.
Again, favor has been uncoupled from merit. There is an entire book of the Bible on this subject—and it is the oldest book of them all, the book of Job. Sometimes good things happen to bad people. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Why? Because it suits God’s purposes.
Pray for favor. Of course. Pray for favor with the loan officer, the physician, the police officer, the difficult neighbor, the angry co-worker. Pray for favor.
But remember: God’s ways are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:9), moreover, “His ways are past finding out,” Romans 11:33.
God is sovereign: sometimes He will bless you with great favor that you can’t explain and do not deserve. Other times He will allow great difficulties–that you can’t explain and do not deserve.
But God is sovereign. He is holy, and because He is holy, He is always good! Praise Him when you feel blessed and praise Him when you don’t!
AΩ.
[1] I sometimes imagine the stream of commerce in which this gold traveled. It began with the seven years of famine, during which the people from not only Egypt but all the neighboring lands came to Joseph to buy food, delivering to him “all the money in Egypt and Canaan” Genesis 47:14. Four-hundred years later, the nature of kingdoms would dictate that generations of Pharaohs would have paid that wealth into the hands of the Egyptian people in exchange for goods and services. Next much of that wealth was given to the Hebrews who left Egypt during the Exodus, Exodus 12:35-36. And then what? A few months later some of it was melted down, fashioned into a golden calf, destroyed by Moses, and poured into the sea, Exodus 32:20. Because that seems like an awful lot of trouble for riches that ended up wasted on idolatry, I have to assume a significant portion of the spoils of Egypt was retained by the Hebrews, leaving them that much wealthier as a nation when they finally reached the Promised Land. After all, Aaron asked for earrings and things, but the Bible does not indicate he took everything they had, Exodus 32:2-3.
Thus, the wealth Joseph collected during the famine ended up funding the new nation of Israel when the people returned to the land of Canaan four hundred years later. That is pretty amazing.
Household Words: 