Genesis 42

Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt for grain. Joseph recognized them. They didn’t recognize him. And Joseph listened to them talk about what they’d done to him all those years ago.

They said it to each other, not to him. They didn’t know he was in the room. And what they said revealed that the guilt had never gone away. Surely we are being punished because of our brother. His blood is required of us.

They had carried it for more than twenty years. The thing they did, that they thought they got away with, had been living inside them the whole time.

Guilt that isn’t dealt with doesn’t disappear. It waits. It colors how you interpret hardship. It makes you wonder, in difficult seasons, whether you’re being found out. Whether the past is catching up.

The brothers were right that their current distress was connected to what they’d done. They were wrong about the nature of the connection. They were being brought into the orbit of restoration, not punishment. But they couldn’t know that yet.