But, all said and done, who cannot wonder at how, over millions of years, a river weaving its way through the desert, can carve a canyon out of granite.  Every day, since before man walked and when dinosaurs still did, that river was carrying away microscopic particles of stone to the sea until it slowly shaped what is now breathtakingly beautiful.  If it hadn't been for that river scarring the dessert, what is now the Royal Gorge would be just another flat plain in south central Colorado.  What must have appeared at one time to be destroying the desert was really shaping its character into something magnificent that never would have been otherwise. 

And, speaking of scarring and shaping, it would be difficult to believe that most people could read the story of Joseph and his family and not feel better about their own.  If you still wonder what a dysfunctional family looks like and your own family isn't living proof enough then all you need do is read what the book of Genesis refers to as "the story of the family of Jacob" (Genesis 37:2) and you will have an example fit for a poster.  Besides, what is dysfunctional anyway?  One definition is that a dysfunctional family is any family with two or more people in it.  When my wife heard that some time ago her response, from many years of being single, was that a dysfunctional family was any family with one or more people in it.  But, just in case you are still wondering, here you have it.

Jacob was the father of a huge family.  We don't know for sure how large because back then women didn't even get counted in the census.  What we do know is that he had several sons of whom Joseph was the youngest and his father's favorite.  We also know that his father made no secret of his youngest son's special status and even had a coat of many colors made for him that was a constant reminder to his brothers of how little they counted in comparison.  And, then, there was Joseph's ego.  On one occasion, recorded in Genesis 37, he had a couple of dreams in which his brothers bowed down and served him.  And, instead of just exploring the meaning of those dreams with his therapist, he simply told his brothers about them without any regard whatsoever for their feelings.

Joseph was apparently one of those people with a real thin filter between his brain and his tongue.  If he thought it, or dreamed it for that matter, he said it.  He was a perfect example of a fanatic in that he wouldn't change his mind and he wouldn't change the subject.  Anyway, Genesis records that his brothers hated him so much that they "could not speak peaceably to him."  (Genesis 37:4)  So, instead of just confessing their anger and dealing with it, they let it stew until it dealt with them and something really sick happened.

Sure enough, as the plot develops, something really sick and sad happens.  The older brothers launch this scheme to get rid of their baby brother.  At first they intend to murder him but then settle for simply selling him into slavery and faking his demise so that their father will think he's dead.  Twenty pieces of silver later, Joseph is on his way to Egypt in bondage.  Then, just when things can't get worse, they do.  A famine strikes the land and Jacob sends his sons to Egypt for grain whereupon they discover that what goes around comes around.  It turns out that their baby brother has not only grown up but has made his way up the ladder in the Egyptian government to a position of such authority that he now holds the power of life and death over the very brothers who once sold him into slavery and broke their father's heart.

But, then, the most unbelievable thing happens.  Long before there was any such thing as a Christian, Joseph models the Christian use of power.  For, instead of using his power to annihilate the very brothers who betrayed him, he used it to forge a relationship with them in which they, only after their father's death, finally became a family.  The brothers who betrayed him finally come clean with him and Joseph uses the opportunity to embrace the only brothers he ever would have by saying, "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good . . .."  "The story of the family of Jacob" became the story of what happens when conflict that should destroy a family is transformed, in the atmosphere of forgiveness and understanding, into a stream of God's mercy that shapes its character for what is ultimately good.

None of this to minimize the pain of family conflict.  And, all of us live with some of that pain either in memory or in current reality.  What I have come to discover in my own experience with family conflict is the presence of conflict is not what reveals a family's character.  The fact that you have conflict in your family only proves your family is human.  What reveals the character of your family is your family's response to that conflict.

Recently, I have come to know the story of a woman who, in her thirties, is trying to come to terms with a very painful past.  I have actually known and respected this person for years.  But, not until recently did I know what she had gone through to get where she is.  Simply put, her family history can be traced along lines that begin with the divorce of her parents and separation from her father for years except for brief periods of time.  Her mother remarried and the man who became my friend's stepfather sexually abused her.  Her mother later divorced that man and married the man with whom she had been having an affair during the second marriage.  My friend was shielded from none of this during the most formative years of her life and is now trying to find some way of intervening to help her mother deal with the alcoholism she practices to kill the pain of all she has lived with and still endures.

Yet, the most remarkable thing is that this person to whom I am referring impresses me as one of the most mature, responsible, stable and loving people I have ever known. By every standard, she should be at least an emotional wreck if not a spiritual disaster.  Yet, she is happily married and a marvelous mother.  I have marveled that she has not simply coped with all of this but has actually overcome and grown because of it.  She is not angry at God and interestingly, not even angry at her parents.  Instead of viewing this whole story from the myopic viewpoint of how it singularly affected her, she has struggled to understand and forgive and learn.

I've known many other people who were broken and bitter over much less than what my friend has endured.  And, the only thing I can honestly discern as the significant difference is the willingness of one to forgive or least try to understand while they struggle to forgive and the inability or unwillingness of the other to do nothing more than simply view it through the eyes of their personal pain.  It seems that conflict either shapes us or destroys us based on not much more than how we choose respond to it.  Now, it's possible I've already described some of the conflict in your own family. But, just in case you missed it, lets review the whole list starting with Joseph and working our way to the present.  There is betrayal, abuse, deceit, a father who doesn't know any better than to favor one child over another and yet expects his children to get along no matter what it costs, divorce, sexual abuse and even adultery and alcoholism to boot.  Did we miss anyone here?

Yet, over against all of that, these two words from Joseph.  First, when his brothers finally come to confess their wrong doing, Joseph says, "Do not be afraid.  Am I in the place of God?"  By the way, I think it's worthy of note that we have no evidence that Joseph's brothers had pure motives in confessing their sin to Joseph.  In fact, they really don't confess at all.  In a third-party-we'll-do-whatever-we-must- to-save-our-own-bacon approach they say to their brother, in essence, "you have to forgive us because that's what dad wanted."  But, never mind to Joseph, in a gracious spirit of forgiving that saw beyond their words to their fears, he embraces them by saying, "forgiveness is ultimately God's to give and not mine to fail at extending.  I have no right not to forgive."

It was much the same thing a counselor tried to tell me once when I was facing the prospect of divorce.  He said that, ultimately, forgiveness or the choice not to give it is really only the business of God.  I have no right not to forgive.  Only God reserves such power.  I still struggle with what that means in my life.  But, I hear Joseph saying much the same thing to his brothers.  "Am I in the place of God?"  In so doing, he models perfectly the truth that forgiveness of betrayal is more easily accomplished when we confess that we never toss it down to others from the high holy hill of sinless perfection but simply accept the opportunities God gives us to extend it across to a brother or sister from whom we will almost certainly need it extended some day ourselves.

And, this second word from Joseph, "though you intended to harm me, God intended it for good."  Joseph had, and we can have, a perspective of conflict that only faith in a tenaciously faithful God allows.  The perspective that God can transform what would have destroyed into what redeems.  The perspective that, no matter what others may do to us that is intended as harm, it can only reach us after first coming through the filter of the grace of God.  And, once it comes through His grace, it always comes out on the other side in redemptive ways.  Sometimes that perspective comes late in life.  Like Joseph, I have come to discover it only after a parent died.  My mother was the emotional buffer in our family.  Only since her death have I been willing to face and deal with some of the conflicts that shaped me.  And, by the grace of God, her death has given new life to my relationship to my father that might have never been had we always been worried about not hurting her feelings.

But, it's a perspective I now count as one of God's greatest gifts.  Like the old man standing in the river at the end of the movie by the same name, as I look back now across my life, especially into the moments that felt like deserts at the time, I can see that a river runs through it.  And, though it could have been a raging torrent that ripped me apart, over time I have come to embrace the conflict as a gift from God.  And, as I struggle to forgive and understand, I am coming to see that the raging torrents of conflict that could have destroyed me have been transformed, by faith, into streams of mercy, never ceasing, that now serve to shape me for what is ultimately good.  I sometimes wonder if that is what heaven will be like for those who choose faith in God instead of despair and love for brother and sister alike instead of hate.  There we'll be, standing in the middle of a bridge suspended for all eternity, the price of admission paid by God's mercy in Christ, marveling at the magnificent beauty God carved like granite in the canyons of our character using as His primary tool of grace and mercy that which we were certain at the time would destroy us.  I sometimes wonder if in heaven there isn't that river running through it.  I sometimes wonder.