By Our family (the four of us that are still in the house) has been reading through The Child’s Story Bible by Catherine F. Vos in the evenings around bed time. We have loved it and I couldn’t recommend it more highly. Anyway, we are reading around Genesis 45-47 where Jacob gets word that his son Joseph is alive. Joseph wants him to leave Canaan and head to Egypt so that they might be together through the famine. During the travel, Jacob stops at Beersheba to offer a sacrifice to the Lord. The text says this:
That night God appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make a great nation out of you there. I will go with you to Egypt , and I will surely bring you back again.”
I read this tonight to the family and I said, “man there is a lot that happens in that comma.” My wife Karie said, “what?” I said, “there is going to be like 400 years of slavery for the Israelites, they are going to experience the 10 plagues on Egypt, get delivered through the Red Sea, fail to enter the promise land, spend 40 years in the desert wandering about, enter numerous wars, experience millions of deaths; and then they will be brought back to Canaan again.” There is a lot that happens from God’s perspective in that comma.
Our Lord is sovereign over his world and sees the end from the beginning. For him 400-500 years is simply a comma, but for those in the trenches; trauma happened in real time, and it hurt. It reminds me of how much we are supposed to have an eternal perspective on life. To the Lord, a thousand years as is a day. To us, a traumatic day can feel like a thousand years. O Lord give to us an eternal perspective. Let us live each and every day in the sight of you who sees the end from the beginning.
Leading Family Devotions 