Genesis 45

Getting The Perspective

God sent me before you to preserve you a remnant in the earth, and to save you alive by a great deliverance. Genesis 45:6-7.

Many of you are learning to draw, and you have often heard the word “perspective.” Perspective is the art of drawing so that things appear to have their natural dimensions. Thus, if you draw a house you must do it so that your drawing makes it appear square or otherwise, like the real house. Before beginning you don't allow your eye to rest specially on the door, or the windows, or the chimney that would give you a lopsided picture; you take a view of the whole building. If you go up to the top of a high hill, you see the surrounding country in perspective. A person who really wants to get a true idea of the city of Edinburgh does not spend all his time wandering about the old closes, interesting though they may be; if he is a wise man, he goes up to the Castle or to Arthur's Seat, and gazes down upon the whole city.

There is such a thing as getting the perspective in life. Joseph got it. He attained to a very high position in Egypt; and to a man who had simply come from a family of shepherds there was surely a temptation to look round on his grandeur and say, “This is Life! Away yonder in Hebron I was not in my true sphere. And those men who ill-used me! They were brutal and cruel; they were not sons of my mother; they were but half-brothers.”

Instead of that, Joseph looked all round on life; and he looked at the sky. When his brothers stood before him and quailed at the simple words, “I am Joseph whom ye sold into Egypt,” he said, “Now, therefore, be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life.... God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.” The brothers had no outlook; they were face to face only with their own misdeeds, and very unhappy. But Joseph had the true perspective. He could see God's guiding hand in all that had happened to him.

Boys and girls, you are young. It is not natural that, like men and women, you should be able to look back and see life in perspective. What does life mean for the most of you? It means a great deal that is very happy football, cricket, the playground. To a few of you, besides these things, it means the joy of getting knowledge. But did you ever think of how much in life you ignore? There are things near you, and things far off that you never turn your eyes to look at.

A great man, in his old age, told a friend that he was awakened to the realities of life by a terrible fall.

When he was quite a young boy, he had a habit of sliding down the stair railing. One day he overbalanced himself, fell to the ground, and was nearly killed. During the illness that followed, he was often reminded of the big things of life. He saw them all around him. He realized God. He sought Him. He found Him. And when as an old man he died, the whole world mourned his loss because he had been wise and good like Joseph. As a boy Joseph thought a good deal about himself. He was full of his dreams. People nowadays would have called him a self-centered boy. But one crushing blow after another came to his feelings. He took the lessons from his life, however, and learned. Experience made him the man of wonderful goodness and wisdom who said to his poor, bewildered brothers, “I am Joseph.”

Long ago, there were men who lived beside Jesus Christ. They were His disciples, and they loved Him. While He was on earth they thought only of the present, they were so happy. But Jesus Christ was crucified and buried. It was very, very difficult for those men to think of life without their Master. A few hours on the cross, and then death. How it must have perplexed them! But those few hours mean more than anything else in the world now. We see them in their true perspective. The cross, which was thought to be the symbol of shame, has come to be the symbol of a great and deep joy.

Boys and girls, that cross of Christ must be in your lives too, or they will be sadly out of perspective. It is only when you realize that Jesus loved you and died for you that life gains its true meaning, that life becomes worth living. Then life's crosses, its worries and its woes, will fall into their places in the vanishing point of the distance; and the foreground will be filled with the love and joy which the cross of Jesus brings.