March 8, 2026 - INSCRIPTIONS FROM THE HEART

Immanuel Garcera

As we look at Joseph this Sunday, I can’t help but notice how perspectives have shifted through the years of how I’ve personally read this account. At first I thought to myself, better not be like Joseph and be boastful! But now, I see Joseph through the fatherly lens of Jacob. Things have changed I guess!

You see, when Joseph shared his dreams of the sun, the moon, and the stars all bowing down to him, expectedly, his siblings hated it. But we see in the account stated in Genesis 37, “...his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind”. To do this was a fatherly act of spiritual patience. It’s an ability to see past the often messy dreams and desires of the next generation and wonder, “what’s God doing here?”. Being fatherly or motherly to the “Josephs” in our care whether it be our own children, people we’re discipling, or simply young believers -- it requires us to press on past our own selves to see and help them go to where God is calling and leading them. Charles Spurgeon said it like this, 

“A boy is a person who is going to carry on what you have started... he is going to sit where you are sitting, and when you are gone, attend to those things which you think are important.”

Church, as we are to press on toward the upward call of Jesus, we must do so with the heart of Jacob, even better, with God the Father’s heart. As we are in the midst of the next generation, with dreamers definitely among them -- how can we faithfully “keep these matters in mind” as we run the race together?

To God be the glory!