Genesis 45:25-46:7 The Spirit Revived

Observation: Near the end of the Joseph story Jacob finds out from his sons that Joseph, whom he believed was dead, is not only alive but ruler of Egypt, and in a position to save his entire family from starvation. When Jacob finds this out, the text says his "spirit revived within him." 

Application: It's helpful to know that the same Hebrew word can mean either "breath", "wind", or "spirit." The idea was that your "spirit" in a sense was your breath: your vitality, your energy to get up and go. In Hebrew thought there was less of a distinction between our bodies and our "spirits." We have some intuitive sense of this in English when a piece of bad news can "knock the wind out of you" or a piece of exciting news can "put the wind back in your sails". 

This story reminds me that sometimes grief can sap our spirits without our even knowing it. Jacob had been going through the motions of life for years by this point, but always part of his bandwidth--his life force, his spirit--was devoted to mourning his lost son. When he finds out Joseph is alive, that energy comes back, and like Popeye eating his spinach, Jacob is revived and fully himself again. 

In many cases, grief doesn't have such an easy fix. As much as we want it, we will not wake up one morning to find a loved one alive again, like Jacob did. Grief is a new normal; it's forming a new life without that special person. But I do believe that eventually, with a lot of hard work and a good network of friends, family and spiritual care, our spirits can revive again. We can get our breath again, though the path forward will look different than we ever expected. We can return to full bandwidth, changed though we may be, remembering the promise that God's Spirit--the breath breathed over the waters at creation, and breathed into the lungs of Jesus to raise him to life--can revive us and our loved ones when the time is right. Nothing is truly lost which belongs to God. Let this promise revive us always. 

Prayer: God, for those who are grieving, despairing, or in any other way out of breath, for those who need your Spirit of life, breathe on us and revive us. Amen.