The holidays are coming. For a lot of us, that sentence alone raises our heart rate.

Because it means sitting at a table with people who hurt us. Maybe they shamed you when you started asking questions. Maybe they told you, kindly or not, that you’re leading your kids astray. Maybe the hurt goes further back, into a church or a home that used God as a weapon.

Last week we made room for anger at God, the church, and ourselves. This week is about anger at people. Specifically, the people we love who hurt us. And what faith looks like when you have to sit across the table from them.

Why Joseph?

Hebrews 11 remembers Joseph at the end of his life:

“By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave instructions about his burial.”* (Hebrews 11:22)

At the end, Joseph trusted that God wasn’t finished. God would bring the family home one day, and he wanted his bones to go with them (Genesis 50:24–25).

But to get to that kind of faith, Joseph walked through the worst family rupture in Genesis. His own brothers hurt him. And his story shows us something many of us were never taught: you can love the people who hurt you and protect yourself from them. God is with you in both.

The story

Joseph is his father’s favorite, and he doesn’t hide it well. (The fancy robe didn’t help. Neither did announcing his dreams about everyone bowing to him.) His brothers’ resentment turns to hatred. They throw him in a pit and sell him to traders headed for Egypt (Genesis 37:28).

In Egypt he’s enslaved, falsely accused, and imprisoned. And the text keeps repeating one line:

“The LORD was with Joseph”* (39:2, 21).

In the house of the man who owned him. In prison. God doesn’t pull him out right away. But God doesn’t leave him, either.

Years later, Joseph has risen to second in command over Egypt. A famine hits, and his brothers show up to buy grain. They don’t recognize him, but he recognizes them instantly.

What Joseph didn’t do

Watch Joseph closely, because he doesn’t do what we were taught “good Christians” do.

He doesn’t pretend it didn’t happen. He “spoke harshly to them”* (42:7). He’s angry, and the text lets him be.

He doesn’t rush to trust them. He holds one brother, Simeon, and tests the rest over months to see whether they’ve changed. Would they abandon their youngest brother, Benjamin, the way they abandoned him?

He doesn’t hide his grief, either. Over and over, he leaves the room to weep. Genesis mentions his tears again and again.

Anger, caution, and tears, all in the same man, all in the same story, and none of it framed as failure.

Then comes the moment. His brother Judah, the one who once suggested selling Joseph, offers himself as a slave in Benjamin’s place (44:33). The brothers have changed. And only then does Joseph send everyone out and weep so loudly the Egyptians hear it.

He admits it - “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt” (45:4).

Notice he names it. Whom you sold. No pretending. Reconciliation, when it comes, is built on truth, and it comes from a place where Joseph is safe.

An honest complication

Here’s the verse many of us had quoted at us:

“Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.”* (Genesis 50:20)

This has been used to shut people up. God meant your abuse for good. Stop being bitter. So let’s be careful with this part.

First, Joseph names the harm: you intended to do harm. He doesn’t minimize it. Second, this is Joseph speaking about his own story, decades later, from safety. No one else gets to say it about your pain. Third, it doesn’t say God caused the harm or approved of it. It says God worked life out of what people meant for evil.

And hear me, because it matters: God does not hurt you to teach you something. The brothers chose harm. God chose to stay with Joseph in it.

One more. Doesn’t the Bible command forgiveness? Joseph does forgive. But it took years, it came after his brothers changed, and it never meant pretending. Forgiveness, trust, and reconciliation are three different things. You can release resentment and still keep a boundary.

So what do we do with this

• Let yourself feel it. Anger and grief at the people who hurt you aren’t sins. Joseph had both, and the LORD was with him.

• Set your terms. You get to decide how close to stand, what you’ll talk about, and when you’ll leave. Trust gets rebuilt by changed behavior over time, not by pressure.

• Take God with you to the table. The same God who was with Joseph in the pit and the prison goes with you into Thanksgiving dinner.

God who was with Joseph,

be with me at every table this season.

Give me courage to love, and wisdom to protect myself. Amen.

*Scripture quotations are from the NRSVue.

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The Closing Question

Tell me in the comments: What’s one boundary you’re thinking about for the holidays this year?

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P.S. This Sunday on Streams of Grace: the God who was with Joseph in the pit, and who is with you now. Come breathe with me.? Sign up here!

This week we sat with Jacob, who wrestled God all night and would not let go. Here is your exhale.

May you know that your anger has not pushed you out of God’s reach.

God has held people who were angrier.

God stayed with every one of them.

May you find the courage to say the hard thing to God’s face,

and the relief of finding God still there

when you’re done.

Where you are angry at yourself,

may God ask your name gently,

and may you hear what God calls you now.

May the night of wrestling end in daybreak.

May the blessing come.

And if you walk away limping,

may you know the limp is holy,

a sign that you met God and didn’t let go.

You are still held. You are still beloved.

You are loved, exactly as you are.

Rest now. The work will keep till Monday.

Anger in deconstruction can show up anywhere. In the car after a sermon clip goes viral. In the shower, rehearsing what you wish you’d said to that youth pastor. At 2 a.m., replaying something you once said to a friend in the name of “truth.”

Here are four things to hold this week. Take what helps and leave the rest.

1. Anger is information, not rebellion. Anger usually means something that mattered was violated: your dignity, your safety, your trust, someone you love. Instead of asking “Is it wrong to feel this?”, try asking “What is my anger protecting?” The answer often shows you what you value most.

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I expected the questions. I expected the grief. I didn’t expect to be standing in my kitchen, furious. Furious at the church for what it taught me. Furious at the people who used God to control me. And, if I’m honest, furious at myself for believing it so long, and for the ways I passed it on.

If I’m honest, I’m still angry at the ways I was taught that women were only as good as the husbands they married and still a bit mad at my deceased parents for trying to match me up with older men instead of helping me carve out a sustainable path for my life.

If you’re questioning the faith you were handed, you may know this anger. And you may have been taught that it’s the most dangerous thing you could feel. Anger at the church is rebellion. Anger at God is sin. Good Christians forgive and move on.

So what do you do with it? This week’s story says: anger isn’t wrong. Bring it to God. Grab hold, and don’t let go.

Why Jacob?

Hebrews 11 remembers Jacob at the very end of his life:

“By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, ‘bowing in worship over the top of his staff.’”* (Hebrews 11:21)

An old man, worshiping, leaning on a staff. Why the staff? Because decades earlier, Jacob spent a whole night wrestling God, and he walked away limping. He may have leaned on his staff because he limped for the rest of his life.

Hebrews puts Jacob in the Faith Hall of Fame with his wound still showing. His faith wasn’t the absence of a fight. It was a fight he never walked away from.

The backstory

Jacob is in trouble. Years earlier he cheated his twin brother, Esau, out of his birthright and his father’s blessing, and then he fled. Now he’s finally heading home, and he hears Esau is coming to meet him with four hundred men. Genesis says Jacob “was greatly afraid and distressed”* (32:7).

His conflict-resolution strategy up to this point has been running away and sending gifts. (Relatable.)

The night before he has to face his brother, Jacob sends everyone across the river Jabbok and stays behind. “Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak”* (32:24).

Who is this man? The text keeps it mysterious. By morning, Jacob is convinced he’s “seen God face to face” (32:30). The prophet Hosea calls him an angel (Hosea 12:4). Either way, Jacob has spent the night grappling with the divine.

When the man can’t win, he strikes Jacob’s hip and wrenches it out of joint. And Jacob, hurting, exhausted, clinging on, says one of the boldest lines in the Bible:

“I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”* (Genesis 32:26)

Anger that holds on

Here’s what I want you to see. Jacob doesn’t walk away from God. He doesn’t pray a polite prayer, either. He fights. And he holds on while he fights.

That’s what honest anger can be in a life of faith: not leaving God, but refusing to let go of God until something real happens.

And notice what God does not do. God doesn’t strike Jacob down for fighting. God doesn’t lecture him about his attitude. God stays in the wrestling match all night long. And at daybreak, God blesses him.

If you’re angry at the church, at what was done to you in God’s name, even at God, you can bring that anger to God. God can take it. God has taken it before.

“What is your name?”

Before the blessing comes, the man asks a strange question: “What is your name?”

And Jacob has to say it: “Jacob.”

That name wasn’t neutral. It comes from the Hebrew word for “heel.” Jacob was born grabbing his twin’s heel (Genesis 25:26), and the name came to mean something like grabber, one who supplants. When Jacob stole Esau’s blessing, Esau said bitterly, “Is he not rightly named Jacob?” (27:36).

So when God asks his name, Jacob has to say out loud who he’s been: the one who grabbed, schemed, and hurt the people closest to him.

Some of our anger lives right here. Anger at ourselves. How did I believe this? Who did I hurt with it? Who did I judge, exclude, or scare with the faith I was handed?

God doesn’t ask Jacob’s name to shame him. God asks so Jacob can be renamed.

A new name, and a limp

“You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”* (Genesis 32:28)

Israel. The text itself explains the name: one who has striven, wrestled, struggled, with God. Sit with that. The people of God are named after a man who wrestled God and wouldn’t let go. The struggle isn’t a detour from faith. It’s written into the family name.

And Jacob walks into the sunrise limping (32:31). You don’t come out of this kind of night unmarked. The limp isn’t a sign you did it wrong. It’s the mark of a real encounter.

An honest complication

Isn’t anger a sin? Many of us were taught so. But Scripture says, “Be angry but do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26). The anger itself isn’t the sin. What we do with it can be: contempt, cruelty, revenge.

Anger is often information. It tells you something that mattered was violated. God gets angry at injustice all through the prophets. Jesus turned over tables in the temple. The psalms are full of people saying furious things to God’s face.

And anger at yourself needs a guardrail. There’s a difference between I did harm and I am bad.

The first is honest and can lead to repair. The second is shame, and shame isn’t where God leaves Jacob. God asks his name so he can change it.

Did God hurt Jacob to teach him a lesson?

This part of the story is confusing, and I don’t want to rush past it. The man strikes Jacob’s hip, and Jacob walks away limping. So is that what God does — wounds us for our own good?

Look at what the text does and doesn’t say. It never calls the injury a punishment. There’s no rebuke, no “because you.” And the blessing comes right after it, not instead of it. The limp is what the wrestling left behind, the mark of a real encounter. It isn’t a lesson God inflicted.

Genesis even treats it as something to honor: Israel remembered that night at the dinner table for generations (32:32).

And hear me on this: God does not harm you to teach you something. If people hurt you in God’s name, that wasn’t God’s discipline, and it isn’t your “holy limp.” That was harm, and God grieves it with you. The promise of this story isn’t that God wounds us. It’s that when we wrestle honestly, God stays, and God blesses the one who limps away.

So what do we do with this

• Say it to God, not just about God. Tell God you’re angry. Out loud, on paper, in the car. That isn’t walking away. That’s grabbing hold.

• Name your part, then let God rename you. If you hurt people with the old faith, say so honestly. Then listen for the new name. It won’t be “failure.”

• Let the limp be holy. You don’t have to hide that this has marked you. Jacob worshiped leaning on his staff for the rest of his life.

God who wrestles with us,

here is my anger. I’m not letting go of you.

Please don’t let go of me. Amen.

*Scripture quotations are from the NRSVue.

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This Friday in the Greenhouse: what to do with anger when it has nowhere to go, including a practice that lets your body move it and a lament prayer to say straight to God.

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The Closing Question

Tell me in the comments: What are you angry about in your faith journey? You’re allowed to say it here.

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This week we stood on the riverbank with Jochebed, and discovered that even when God is silent, the river is never empty. Here is your exhale.

May you know, in your bones,

that your questions have not carried you away from God.

You are not backsliding. You are being carried.

May God be the ark beneath you this week —

sealed, steady, and on the water with you.

When God feels silent,

may you remember the river in Exodus,

where God was never named

and never once absent.

May God hold the ones standing on the bank, afraid,

and may you feel the relief

of not having to carry their fear yourself.

May you notice your Miriams,

and may you see God in them.

You were seen as good before you ever touched the water.

You still are.

You are loved, exactly as you are.

Rest now. The work will keep till Monday.

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Quick recap: On Tuesday we stood on the riverbank with Jochebed, who set her son afloat in a basket and trusted God with the river. God is never named in that part of the story, yet God was holding the baby, the mother, and the sister the whole time. Questioning isn’t backsliding, and the people who are scared for you are held by God too. Today we get practical.

It’s one thing to believe God is holding everyone. It’s another to sit across the table while someone asks if you’re “still going to church,” in that tone. You know the tone.

Here are four things to hold this week. Take what helps and leave the rest.

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If you’ve started questioning the faith you were handed, someone has probably said this to you. Maybe your mom. Maybe a spouse or an old friend from youth group. Maybe it came in a text at 11 p.m. with a Bible verse attached. (Nothing says “I love you” like Jeremiah 17:9 with no context.)

Even people on Instagram tell me they’re praying for my soul when I tell you that it’s ok to sleep in on Sunday. Perfect strangers, worried about my faith!

Underneath their questions is usually another one, the one that keeps a lot of us up at night: Are they right? Am I backsliding? Did I wander so far that God let go of me?

This week’s story answers that question. Spoiler alert - The answer is no.

Why Jochebed?

Hebrews 11, the Faith Hall of Fame, moves from Abraham down through his family until it reaches Moses. But before it says a word about Moses, it honors his parents:

“By faith Moses was hidden by his parents for three months after his birth, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.”* (Hebrews 11:23)

By faith. That’s why they’re on the list. Not because everything turned out well. Because in the scariest moment of their lives, they trusted that God was holding what they couldn’t hold.

That’s the faith this week is about. And it’s the faith you need when your people are scared, your certainties are gone, and you’re not sure where God went.

The story

Pharaoh fears the Hebrews and orders every baby boy thrown into the Nile (Exodus 1:22). A mother, Jochebed, hides her son for three months. When she can’t hide him anymore, she seals a papyrus basket with tar and pitch, lays him inside, and sets it among the reeds at the river’s edge. His sister, Miriam, “stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him”* (2:4).

The Hebrew word for that basket is tevah. It appears in only one other story in the Bible: Noah’s ark. Jochebed isn’t throwing her son away. She’s building him an ark and trusting God with the river.

Where is God in this story?

From the moment the basket goes into the water until Moses is safe in Pharaoh’s house (2:1–10), God is never mentioned. Not once. No voice from heaven. No angel. No sign.

Just a terrified mother, a watching sister, and a river.

And yet Hebrews calls it faith. Because faith isn’t feeling God’s presence. Faith is trusting that God is there when you can’t see or hear a thing.

And God was there. God was working through the unlikeliest person imaginable: Pharaoh’s own daughter, who finds the basket and takes pity on the baby. God was even working through Miriam’s quick thinking, which gets Jochebed hired to nurse her own son (2:7–9). Then, a few verses later, the text says it outright: “God heard their groaning, and God remembered… God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them”* (2:24–25).

God was holding the baby in the basket. God was holding the mother on the bank. God was holding the sister in the reeds. The river was never empty because God was there the whole time.

This is you, and this is them

If you’re questioning, you might feel like the baby in the basket, set adrift from everything that used to hold you. Hear this: you’re not in the river alone. You’re in an ark, and God is holding it.

And the people who are scared for you? They’re Jochebed on the bank. Many of them live under their own Pharaoh, a fear-based theology that taught them one wrong belief could cost you everything. When your mom says “I’m worried about your soul,” she may be a woman on a riverbank trying to build you an ark out of the only materials she has: prayers, verses, pleading.

(And that word, “soul”? In Hebrew it’s nefesh, your whole living self. Underneath “I’m worried about your soul” is often “I’m scared of losing you.”)

Here’s the part that sets us both free. God is holding them, too. You don’t have to carry their fear, and they don’t have to carry you. The same God holds both sides of the river.

Questioning is not backsliding

Let’s define the word that gets thrown around. In the prophets, “backsliding” (the KJV’s word, often translated “faithlessness” today) meant turning away from God toward idols and injustice (see Jeremiah 3). It never meant asking God hard questions.

Scripture is full of people who questioned God right to God’s face: the psalmists, Job, Habakkuk. Their questions were a way of turning toward God, not away.

If you’re bringing your doubts to God, you aren’t sliding away. You’re leaning in.

An honest complication

This story ends better than most. That’s a miracle, not a formula. I can’t promise that if you trust God, your family will come around. Some relationships drift and don’t return the same. What I can promise is what Hebrews holds up: God doesn’t let go of the basket, even when the ending isn’t what we hoped.

And one guardrail. If “worry” has turned into control, threats, or shunning, that isn’t Jochebed. Trusting God with your people never means staying in harm’s way. You get to decide what feels safe and what isn’t.

So what do we do with this

• Translate before you react. When you hear “I’m worried about your soul,” try hearing “I’m scared of losing you.” You can receive the love without accepting the theology.

• Hand their fear to God. It’s not yours to fix. Pray it, name it, and set it in God’s hands instead of your own.

• Bring your questions to God, not just about God. That’s the difference between drifting away and leaning in.

You were seen as good before you ever touched the water. You’re not backsliding. You’re being carried. And so are they.

*Scripture quotations are from the NRSVue.

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This Friday in The Greenhouse: What to say when someone’s fear comes out sideways, and a prayer for placing your people, and yourself, in God’s hands.

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The Closing Question

Tell me in the comments: Has anyone called your questions “backsliding”? What do you wish you’d said?

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P.S. This Sunday on Streams of Grace: what faith looks like when God seems silent. Come breathe with me. Sign up here!

May you know you are not the first to stand here —

unable to stay, unable yet to see the road.

The father of faith stood right where you are standing.

May you let your questions count as faith this week.

May you try, even once, saying the true thing out loud to God,

and find that God is not afraid of it.

May God show you the next step —

only the next one —

and …

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Quick recap: On Tuesday we met Abraham, who “set out, not knowing where he was going,” leaving a father who had started the same journey and stopped halfway. Today we get practical about the season Abraham started in: the early days, when you know you can’t stay but you can’t see the road yet.

There’s a stage of this nobody talks about much. It comes before the hard conversations and the holiday tension. It’s the quiet part, when the knowing is still mostly private.

You’re sitting in the same pew, or the same group chat, or the same family dinner. Nothing has visibly changed. But inside, something has. You’re carrying a question no one around you knows you’re carrying. That can be one of the loneliest places a person can stand.

So here are a few things to hold this week. They’re ways to think, not rules to follow.

1. You don’t owe anyone an announcement. Abraham didn’t have a plan when he left, and you don’t need one before you’re allowed to question your faith. You get to decide when to tell, who to tell, and how much. Some people want to be open early. Some need a long, quiet season first. Both are allowed. Waiting isn’t dishonesty. It’s pacing.

2. Name what you’re leaving, and what you’re not. Deconstruction can feel like everything is falling at once. It usually isn’t. Try sorting it into three piles: what I can’t carry anymore, what I still treasure, and what I honestly don’t know yet. Abraham left his father’s gods. He didn’t leave his capacity to love, to worship, or to hope. Neither will you.

3. Your people may be Terah. If someone you love can’t follow you, try holding the possibility that they came as far as they could. That doesn’t mean their words don’t hurt. It means you can grieve the distance without deciding they’re the enemy.

4. Find one safe witness. Not a crowd. One person, one therapist, one online space where you can say the true thing out loud. The early days are too lonely to carry in total silence.

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I was dressed up, fresh from church, visiting at her house. I had recently been hired as a full time music pastor at a tiny little church who was eager to reach their surrounding community. I was so excited to both dive into my calling and get to bui…

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It isn’t only the questions. It’s the look across the Thanksgiving table. The careful text from your mom that says just praying for you. The friend who used to call and now doesn’t quite know what to say. The spouse who loves you and is scared of who you’re becomin…

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For six Sundays we’ve walked through the mission Jesus announced for himself in Luke 4: good news to the poor, freedom for the oppressed, rest for the weary. We sat with the line he refused to read, and with Mary’s song that scared an empire. We heard the prophets reject a peace that is only quiet because the hurting were hushed. The Samaritan handed us a mirror, the Jubilee gave us permission to rest, and we remembered that the good news was never meant to be carried alone.

Many of you have told me the sermons stirred up more than one Sunday can hold. So I made something to hold the rest.

Justice Beyond the System: A Deeper Journey Through the Mission of Jesus is a 61-page companion for the weary, the wondering, and the ones untangling a faith that hurt. Each week moves in three parts:

• The Study: a deep-dive essay that turns one piece of Jesus’ mission over honestly, including the hard parts.

• The Practice: a gentle somatic reset, journal prompts with room to write, a personal liturgy, and a breath prayer to carry through the week.

• The Blessing: a blessing spoken over you. It’s the exhale, and all you have to do is receive it.

At the back you’ll find all six breath prayers in one place, an index of the practices to come back to whenever you need them, and resources for when this work surfaces something heavy.

You can use it on your own, with a trusted friend, or with a small, gentle group. There’s no schedule to keep and no one grading you. One movement a week is a perfectly holy speed.

The sermons will always be free, every one of them (you can find them all at www.streamsofgrace.life). This book is the slower, deeper companion, and it’s my thank-you to the people who make this work possible.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your free copy is waiting just below. If you’re not, you can become one to get it, along with every resource I make from here on. Or you can pick up the book on its own in the shop.

Either way, I’m so glad you’re here.

— Rev. Dr. Amanda

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This week — our last in this series — we saw the first community that lived Jesus’ manifesto together, and we remembered that we were never meant to carry it by ourselves. Here is your exhale.

Blessed are you who wer…

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If community is where you were hurt, your body knows it. Belonging itself can feel unsafe — the very thing you long for can also make you brace. That’s not brokenness; that’s a nervous system that learned, for good reason, that groups can be dangerous. We’re not going to override that today. We’re going to honor it, and gently make a little room for the possibility of being held again — on your terms, at your pace.

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I am, in some ways, the last person who should preach a sermon about Christian community. I get anxious walking into church buildings. I left. A lot of you know that story because it’s your story too — the community was the very place the wound happened. So when I say the next thing, I need you to he…

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This week we found that the favor Jesus proclaimed was a Jubilee — rest for the land, release for the captive, a whole world reset. Here is your exhale.

Blessed are you who were taught this world was only a waiting r…

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Escapist theology doesn’t just live in the mind. It lives in a body that never quite arrives — always braced, always hustling toward the next thing, treating rest as something to be earned and the physical world as background scenery. If you were taught that this life is just a waiting room, your nervous system may not really believe it’s allowed to land here. Today we practice landing.

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I came home from school. The house was empty. My mother’s shoes were by the door but my mother was not. And the theology I had absorbed from reading Left Behind, clicked instantly…

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Blessed are you who are laying down the map of us and them — the one you were handed so young you thought it was just how the world was made.

Blessed are you who have been the one in the ditch, re…

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Our nervous systems are sorting machines. In a fraction of a second, before conscious thought, the body decides: safe, or not safe? Us, or them? That reflex kept our ancestors alive, and it isn’t evil. But when it’s been trained by a fear-based faith — taught that whole categories of people are threats — it fires when it shouldn’t, and it fires at people who are simply different, not dangerous. Today we don’t shame the reflex. We just gently teach it that it doesn’t always have to run the show.

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