[To follow The Ewellogy, please click on Leave a Comment above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.]

I often write about our privilege and responsibility to participate in God’s great Adventure, the story that started in Genesis 1 and is ongoing today. I don’t often write about the cost of such participation, but I couldn’t help but noticing cost in a recent reading of Psalm 105.

Psalm 105 is one of those chapters in the Bible you can read if you don’t have time to read the whole thing! Other such chapters are Acts 7 and Hebrews 11. Early in the Psalm, God promises the land:

He said to them, “I will give you all the land of Canaan as your inheritance.” They were very few in number when God gave them that promise, and they were all foreigners to that land. (Psalm 105.11, 12, Passion Translation)

Then the Psalmist begins to recount some significant events and after finding out about a famine, we read:

But he had already sent a man ahead of his people to Egypt; it was Joseph, who was sold as a slave. (Psalm 105.17, Passion Translation)

“He had sent a man ahead…” How did he send him? As a slave! Joseph served as a slave and also in prison from age 17 to age 30. It took 13 years for him to become an “overnight success” as recorded in Genesis chapters, 37, 39 – 41. Later, when Joseph is reunited with his brothers and they are ashamed(!) at selling him and afraid he will take retribution on them, he responds:

Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. (Genesis 50.19, 20, ESV)

Joseph was a hero of the story of establishing the nation Israel; God used him in a significant way, but it came at a cost. 

I continue to call all of us to God’s great Adventure! And just like playing for a winning team, there’s great joy in the victory, but the victory comes with the cost of countless hours of cost in preparation and self-denial. 

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14.27 – 33, ESV)