AFFLICTION'S PROGENY

. . . and the second son he called Ephraim,
“For God had caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.”
Gen. 41:52


For a woman, bearing a child is a process, full of blessing. Usually quite an exciting one, despite episodic nausea or quirky cravings. Anticipation fills each stage. Every nuance is precious, stored away in its own house of remembering, where it will be taken out endlessly over the years, reviewed in minutest detail, and cherished as blessing-born.

Despite all pregnancy, when you get right down to it, being uncharted lands of excitingly fresh discoveries, the condition defies secrecy. Life, though secreted away in safety’s womb, with the growing becomes evident. Finally the expected, eagerly anticipated child arrives, lays in your arms for the first time, filling that emptiness your heart has held secured just for its arrival.

Maybe that’s why Joseph’s words catch me up short. Fruitfulness in affliction? And I’m left pondering a new born awareness.

How have I failed to recognize the arrival of my own child? My Ephraim?

Paul reminds me in Romans 5 what Ephraim most likely looks like: perseverance, character, hope, love....and countless other children gracing my life. Each and every one a child God caused to be birthed in me in the land of my affliction.

Too often, at least in my life, “affliction” seems that land to be grudgingly endured . . . mumbling and grumbling-filled, on my part. Joseph, on the other hand, reminds me of something different.

Rather than being dismissed as a wasteland in which I hunger for the land of promise, I need to esteem affliction, in its varying guises, as a God-designed land of opportunity.

Lord, may I learn to recognize affliction’s land as a territory impregnated with Your heaven-produced harvest. May I embrace it with rejoicing, holding out my now empty arms, awaiting the Ephraim soon to fill them.



© DeAnna L. Brooks
17 January 2005