June 20, 2023
Daily Devotion:
"God Has Made Me Fruitful..."
Genesis 41:47–52
As predicted, for seven years, the land produced bumper crops. During those years, Joseph gathered all the crops grown in Egypt and stored the grain from the surrounding fields in the cities. He piled up huge amounts of grain like sand on the seashore. Finally, he stopped keeping records because there was too much to measure. During this time, before the first of the famine years, two sons were born to Joseph and his wife, Asenath, the daughter of Potiphera, the priest of On. Joseph named his older son Manasseh, for he said, “God has made me forget all my troubles and everyone in my father’s family.” Joseph named his second son Ephraim, for he said, “God has made me fruitful in this land of my grief.”
Joseph proclaimed openly that God had made him forget all his troubles, even those in his father's household. Above and beyond that, God had made him fruitful in a land and in circumstances that had brought him nothing but trouble. How humble of Joseph to acknowledge that! The memories were still there, lodged deep in the creases beneath his cranium, but when relief finally came, God made him forget the pain, the anguish of what had happened.
It is very tempting to try to get revenge on the Reubens and the Judahs and the Dans and the Mrs. Potiphars from our past. To get back at those who have stung us and stripped us and hurt us with evil deeds and ugly words. Instead, we must give birth to a Manasseh. Could it be that it's time to ask the Lord God to erase the stings in your memory? Only He can do that. Then, it will be time to go on to give birth to an Ephraim. To remember how God has abundantly blessed us. Talk about a positive, affirming name: "God has made me fruitful." But it doesn't stop there. With the plural ending, this word conveys the idea of double benefit—multiple blessings. It's what we would call "superabundance." And it was God who did it all.
