Rachel and I sat together at a café on a rainy Seattle morning. I’d flown across the country so that we could spend a couple of precious days together before she had her first child. On the cusp of her transition into motherhood, we felt a bit like Mary and Elizabeth visiting one another. We shared our dreams and hopes and fears and frustrations as we have done countless times over the 18-year stretch of our friendship.

We laugh to recall how our friendship started: our freshman year in college I approached her and said something like: “I think we will be friends.” I was right. We fell into friend-love, became nearly inseparable, and now nearly 20 years later, we both count our friendship as an enduring sign of God’s grace and love in our lives.

Our friendship is precious partly because we both know it could have turned out differently. You see, our friendship fell apart our sophomore year of college.

We spent a year basically not speaking to one another. Thankfully, by our senior year, we grew close again—close enough that when I moved overseas after college, she spent a summer visiting; close enough that we still find ways to visit one another wherever we are. We now talk nearly every day.

Our friendship has waxed and waned with periods of silence and distance, but except for that time in college, we never had acrimony. But oh, during that time…

 
 

Throughout the years we occasionally mentioned the dark times, but usually only in passing or even as a joke. It wasn’t until we sat together over eggs and coffee that rainy morning in Seattle that we talked openly and directly about what had happened.

We tried to remember exactly what caused us to pull apart. Rachel had transferred away for a semester and when she transferred back the troubles began. I was suffering from the wicked combination of a broken heart and undiagnosed depression. That alone would do it. I was also jealous that she had direction and purpose at a time when I was floundering, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. The very things that I had so admired in her—confidence, an extroversion that made people feel loved, good humor—now seemed threatening. I felt invisible. I lashed out. She only knew that I was angry and felt enormous resentment from me. Neither of us understood what was happening.

As we talked in Seattle, we both shared our feelings without blame. We also both listened without defensiveness.

What happened to pull bring us back together, I asked. She remembered that I wrote her a letter saying that I still cared about her. It meant the world to her. We both recalled what a relief it was that I studied abroad for a semester. We both needed space. (Continued on next page.)
 

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The story of Joseph in Genesis is a miraculous account of how God’s grace can transform relationships.

Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son. His brothers were jealous of their dad’s attention and sold Joseph into slavery, telling their father that he had been killed. Through his God-given gifts and a plot worthy of a Broadway hit, Joseph became a leading advisor to the Pharaoh of Egypt. His shrewd business skills ensured the people of Egypt had plenty to eat in a time of great famine. Meanwhile, in the homeland the brothers were starving. Hearing that there was food in Egypt, they went and begged before Joseph, but “they did not recognize him.” (Genesis 42:8)

They did not recognize him because they thought he was dead. They could not have predicted the way that God had transformed his life. Joseph had risen to a position of great status.

They, meanwhile, had become beggars in a foreign land. Whereas earlier the brothers held Joseph’s life in their hands, now Joseph had all the power. They didn’t even know who he was.

Joseph, on the other hand, knew exactly who they were. He had every right to ignore his brother’s cries for help—after all, they had hated him. They had disowned him and condemned him to a life of slavery or death. If Joseph’s need for revenge had gotten the upper hand, he easily could have given his brothers what they deserved by enslaving them, ignoring them, or putting them to death.

Instead of exacting the punishment they deserved, Joseph forgave them and reconciled with them. What motivated Joseph to forgive them and restore their relationship?

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