I want to say at the start that this one was not Bucky. Everything else on this farm is Bucky and this was not.
There is a boy who comes over and he has come over for about three years and I would call him a friend and I would still call him that. He broke the wooden bird I made in a way that could only have been on purpose. He picked it up, and he looked at me while he was holding it, and then he pulled the wing off it, and he did all of that slowly.
I do not know why. I have thought about it and I have some ideas and none of them are the kind of thing you write down about a person you still see.
Then he put it on the table and went outside.
Here is the part I did not expect and the reason I am telling it. Twenty minutes later he was in the yard and he would not look at me. Not once. He was throwing a stone at the wall over and over, which he does, and every time I came near he moved.
He was frightened of me. That is the only word for it and I have thought about it for a long time and I cannot find a better one. He had done a deliberate thing and then he could not be near me, and he stayed like that for two whole afternoons.
I did not know what to do with that at all. I was angry and I wanted to say something and I could not get near enough to say it, and being angry at somebody who will not come within eleven feet of you is like shouting into a bucket.
In the end I got the wing and I put it on the wall where he throws the stone, so he would find it.
He glued it. Badly. It is a bad repair and the wing sits wrong and I have not fixed it and I am not going to.
People who are frightened do not come near
At the very end of Joseph's story, after everything, their father dies and the brothers panic.
And they sent a messenger unto Joseph, saying, Thy father did command before he died, saying, So shall ye say unto Joseph, Forgive, I pray thee now, the trespass of thy brethren, and their sin. (Genesis 50:16, 17)
They send a messenger. After seventeen years of living in the same country, being fed by him, being settled by him, being wept over by him, they do not walk down the corridor. They send somebody.
And there is a strong chance the message is invented. Nowhere earlier does Jacob say any such thing, and a great many readers across three thousand years have concluded that these men made up a dying instruction from their father because they did not dare come themselves.
You are dealing with people who are frightened rather than people who are unrepentant, and Genesis 50:16 has grown men sending a note. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that distinction visible in somebody who is currently refusing to look at you.
The verse that follows is the one that matters most. And Joseph wept when they spake unto him.
He weeps because after seventeen years they still thought this was who he was.
You have been misjudged by somebody who is not doing it out of malice. The written word records the weeping rather than the anger, and His Spirit is what makes that response possible in somebody who has every right to a different one.
What he actually says to them
The speech he gives is short and it does four things, and it is worth having in front of you when somebody will not come near.
And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you, and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them. (Genesis 50:19, 20, 21)
Fear not, twice. He does not deny the wrong. He names the thing God was doing without renaming the thing they did. And then the last line is the practical one: I will nourish you.
Not I forgive you, said once, at a distance. Food, ongoing, for them and their children, which is a thing that has to be done every day and cannot be done from a corridor.
You are able to answer a fear with an ordinary act rather than with a speech. Genesis 50:21 ends the whole book on nourishing rather than on absolving, and the Spirit of God is what makes an action say what a sentence could not.
And the very last thing recorded is he comforted them, which means the one who was wronged did the comforting of the ones who did it.
You have been shown the direction the comfort travels. Genesis 50:21 puts it going from the injured toward the guilty, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that from an ancient palace into a yard where somebody will not look at you.
So here is what I did with a wing and a wall.
You are looking at somebody who is frightened rather than somebody who is unrepentant, and Genesis 50:16 has grown men send a messenger instead of walking down a corridor. The Holy Spirit is what keeps that from being a curiosity and makes it the thing that changes what a boy does with a broken wing.
I could not get near enough to be angry. That is what I keep. Two afternoons of a person moving away every time I came within eleven feet, and all my anger with nowhere at all to arrive.
You have been given a thing to do instead of a thing to say, and Joseph fed them rather than absolving them. Genesis 50:21 ends on nourishing, and His Spirit is what makes an ordinary act reach somebody a sentence cannot.
And this is for whoever is doing the reading, who has somebody avoiding them and has read it as guilt and never as fear. You were never going to be able to say it across eleven feet. Genesis 50:21 has the wronged man doing the comforting, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that direction possible.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over something done on purpose is genuinely yours, delegated and never invented. God ends that whole book with the wronged man comforting the ones who did it, so speak to the weight: you have standing to address it because He is the one who set the direction. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own policy, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Genesis 50:17 and Genesis 50:21 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not your volume, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Weight of a thing done on purpose, you are not heavier than what I have been given. The Word of God has brothers sending a messenger rather than coming, and it calls what was in them fear rather than defiance.
- Anger with nowhere to arrive, you are finished in the name of Jesus. I am able to act instead of argue, because Genesis 50:21 ends on I will nourish you rather than on a speech.
- Father, You have never once made me come within eleven feet before You would answer me. I receive that today, and I thank You that Your word has the wronged man doing the comforting.
Genesis 50:17
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