The Lord sent famine
Alec Shuttleworth
August 15, 2017
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Psalm 105: 16-22
16 When he summoned famine against the land,
and broke every staff of bread,
17 he had sent a man ahead of them,
Joseph, who was sold as a slave.
18 His feet were hurt with fetters,
his neck was put in a collar of iron;
19 until what he had said came to pass,
the word of the Lord kept testing him.
20 The king sent and released him;
the ruler of the peoples set him free.
21 He made him lord of his house,
and ruler of all his possessions,
22 to instruct his officials at his pleasure,
and to teach his elders wisdom.
“So I rode down to the waterside, . . . and there saw a lamentable fire. . . . Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies, till they some of them burned their wings and fell down.” - Samuel Pepys.
The Great Fire of London destroyed about four fifths of London. Out of the ashes arose St Paul’s Cathedral, and as a consequence of the fire the great plague which had beset the city came to an end. Tempting isn’t it to see the hand of God, moving in his mysterious ways his wonders to perform? Our reading today says the Lord sent famine to their country and took all their food away …and then lays out the salvation he had planned through Joseph. Sold into slavery, abused, wrongly imprisoned Joseph.
Good things do come out of bad. I am not convinced either when I read Joseph’s story or Pepys’ account of the horrors of the fire of London that they are God’s divine will.
Loving God
When faced with disaster
When faced with turmoil and confusion and panic
Spare us the fatalism
The shallow games of divine consequences
Stir us to pity
To action
To be your love in the unliveliest places of the world
Amen.
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