Regret is a bitter seasoning.

Regret. We look back upon a time with bitterness, pain, or embarrassment. Regret is a fervent wish that something had happened otherwise. And the longer we live, the more incidents of regret we will have. Even the most godly among us still struggle with regret, because their godliness makes them all the more aware of how it should have been. It is human to regret.

Genesis 47:1-31
Joseph went and told Pharaoh, "My father and brothers, with their flocks and herds and everything they own, have come from the land of Canaan and are now in Goshen." 2 He chose five of his brothers and presented them before Pharaoh. 3 Pharaoh asked the brothers, "What is your occupation?" "Your servants are shepherds," they replied to Pharaoh, "just as our fathers were." 4 They also said to him, "We have come to live here awhile, because the famine is severe in Canaan and your servants' flocks have no pasture. So now, please let your servants settle in Goshen." 5 Pharaoh said to Joseph, "Your father and your brothers have come to you, 6 and the land of Egypt is before you; settle your father and your brothers in the best part of the land. Let them live in Goshen. And if you know of any among them with special ability, put them in charge of my own livestock." 7 Then Joseph brought his father Jacob in and presented him before Pharaoh. After Jacob blessed Pharaoh, 8 Pharaoh asked him, "How old are you?" 9 And Jacob said to Pharaoh, "The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers." 10 Then Jacob blessed Pharaoh and went out from his presence..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................28 Jacob lived in Egypt seventeen years, and the years of his life were a hundred and forty-seven. 29 When the time drew near for Israel to die, he called for his son Joseph and said to him, "If I have found favor in your eyes, put your hand under my thigh and promise that you will show me kindness and faithfulness. Do not bury me in Egypt, 30 but when I rest with my fathers, carry me out of Egypt and bury me where they are buried." "I will do as you say," he said. 31 "Swear to me," he said. Then Joseph swore to him, and Israel worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.


Jacob had lived in such a way that he was now full of regret. As he stood before Pharaoh, an old man well beyond the years I will ever attain, he responds to Pharaoh's question of age with a less than joyful answer. He thinks back, standing there, to his early days with his twin brother Esau -- with whom he made an enemy. He thinks of how he deceived his aging and blind father to steal his brother's birthright. He considers his flight and exile and servitude to his uncle Laban, and his long labor for a family of his own. And he remembers how he found himself favoring first Rachel over Leah, then Joseph and Benjamin over his other 10 sons. He observes how that favor twisted his children until they plot to first kill then sell into slavery the favored one Joseph. He still feels the deep ache of those long years when he believed he had lost Joseph, only now recently to see him alive. His life was a festering wound of regrets.

Yes, he was reunited with his son, who rescued his family out of starvation and brought them to Egypt to eat the fat of the land, even at the expense of the Egyptians around them. But this was a foreign land, full of foreign gods, and Joseph's seemingly easy way with the Egyptians and their customs was uncomfortable to Jacob. His daughter in law's father was the Priest of On, after all! And this wasn't home. Jacob saw nothing familiar around him. Only his memories anchored him to the familiar. And those memories were seeping with regret.

Jacob, in the end, wanted to go home. He wanted his bones buried in the soil he had trod all his life. His homeland was not this foreign place of the Nile and the pyramid and these painted-up people. He yearned for hearth and home in the end.

I do too. Regret is a bitter seasoning. This world, with its painted-up people and foreign gods, is not where I belong. Here, all I have is my memory of my short sojourn. The years are few and difficult.

When I die, please see to it that I am taken to my Home. Where I can rest with my Father, and awake there. Without regret.