The Fellowship of Joy

  Swanson, John August. Story of Joseph, from Art in the Christian Tradition , a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56562 [retrieved February 23, 2025]. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson, https://www.johnaugustswanson.com/.   Genesis 45:3–11, New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence. Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a re...

Blessings and Curses   You might say that blessings and curses are two different experiences of the same reality. The ultimate reality is God, revealed, present, speaking, acting in history, confronting us in our lives. The experience of God is  how we respond. That determines whether an encounter with God is a blessing or a curse.   Jeremiah 17:5-10 Those who trust the Lord are like trees   Thus says the LORD: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD. They shall be like a shrub in the desert and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.   Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does no...