READING: Genesis 41:37-43:34, Matthew 13:31-58
I actually chuckled when I read the text this time. The story itself is not funny—in fact, it’s in the context of a famine—but the single line of Jacob toward his sons is funny to me. Jacob had learned there was food in Egypt (for, yet unbeknownst to him, his son Joseph had led the Egyptians to prepare for the famine), and he couldn’t figure out why his sons had not already headed there. I can just hear these words of an exasperated father: “Why do you keep looking at each other?” (Gen 42:1). They were hungry, and they knew where there was food—so why where they just standing there?
I’m reminded of a similar question in Acts 1, when two angels said to Jesus’ disciples as they stood around after Jesus returned to the Father, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up into heaven?” (Acts 1:11). They had a job to do—to be Jesus’ witnesses to the ends of the earth—and waiting and watching were not the right moves. In the power of the Spirit, they were to be Jesus’ witnesses.
I’m also reminded today that God likely asks the same question of us at times: “With the gospel in your hands and billions of people still lost, why do you just keep looking at each other?” The question is a penetrating one that makes us necessarily uncomfortable.
PRAYER: “God, forgive me when I just stand around when there’s Great Commission work to be done.”
DAILY ACTION STEP: Do something today for God. Take gospel initiative.
TOMORROW’S READING: Genesis 44-46, Matthew 14
