God Blesses the Faithful

I’ve been enjoying reading in the Old Testament lately. This morning I was reading about how Joseph died and the next Pharaoh didn’t know Joseph, but he certainly noticed the ever-growing size of their population of Hebrews.

“Immigrants.” It’s a problem as old as the ages, and yet we have all either had ancestors who were immigrants or have been immigrants ourselves. Immigrants– Outsiders– people who are different than the rest.

Pharaoh decided to do away with them slowly by killing off the baby boys, as they were born, so he called in the two midwives–see women have always had more power than we realized–and asked them to kill all the boy Hebrew babies.

Yeah, yeah, we’ve all heard that story, but what about Exodus 1:20-21, where it mentions what God did for the midwives as a result of their faithfulness in not killing the babies.

“Therefore, God dealt well with the midwives…And it came to pass because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses.”

The King James Version says He made them houses. The New International Version says God blessed them with families of their own. The two are in agreement. The KJV just says it in the Old English way, which I sometimes misunderstand and need to read a more modern English version.

But I take great comfort in this reminder from Exodus 1:20-21. When we honor God in our choices, he blesses us.

Sometimes the blessings take time, like how Joseph was sold into slavery and ended up in prison, but he worked his way out. In due time, God blessed him over-abundantly, putting him in charge of all of Egypt and reuniting him with his family.

God does bless our faithful actions.

And that makes me think of Christmas, the time of the birth of Jesus, because this gift blesses our faithfulness with the hope of salvation.

So I’ll try not to stress too terribly much about the gifts and the money because that’s not what this is about, is it?

It’s about God blessing us–the whole world– with faith, hope, and love, a baby born on Christmas day to save the world from punishment. There is now no condemnation for those who believe.

Merry Christmas!