Redemption Comes Hard

Like any doting grandparent, Pastor Ken Koeman has been watching his five post millennial grandkids emerge into their young adult years. They’re global citizens. Social media is their platform. Their world is hi-tech. Their ever present smartphone means they are always tuned in, accessing instant news, shopping, communication, sports. Their future is incredibly promising. But this seasoned pastor, now fighting his own battle with cancer, also knows what else may very well come their way, and knows they need to be warned, and given hope, while he still has time. They are living in a broken world, where deep patterns of human selfishness, injustice, abuse, and disloyalty threaten every relationship they will need to flourish. A smart phone is no defense against betrayal.They will face strained partnerships, polarized work teams, chilled friendships, lies, backbiting, even abandonment. It will be shattering. And they will agonize over how such broken relationships can ever be redeemed.
It will not be easy. They may think it impossible.Enter the much beloved biblical story of Joseph, popularized by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. This ancient Genesis story is utterly realistic in its depiction of raw human evil as Joseph is sold off into slavery by his hate filled brothers. For over twenty years the family is alienated. Then God makes his move, and the impossible happens. Here is absolute assurance that redemption, though it comes hard, can come. Read it, savor the drama, and dare to hope again that nothing is beyond the power of God to heal and restore.