The Letter That Took Twenty-Three Years to Open

In 2015, a Detroit man named Ronald Cotton finally opened a letter his estranged brother David had mailed him in 1992. For over two decades, it sat in a shoebox, unopened. Ronald couldn't bring himself to read it — not after David had cheated him out of their mother's house, forged documents, and left Ronald homeless with two small children.

When Ronald finally unfolded that yellowed page, he found six words: "I am sorry. Come home."

David, it turned out, had spent those twenty-three years building a small contracting business. He'd renovated their mother's house and put Ronald's name back on the deed. He'd set aside a room for Ronald's children — children who were now grown adults he'd never met.

Ronald drove to Detroit that weekend. When he walked through the front door, David couldn't speak. He just wept. And Ronald wept with him.

What strikes me about Genesis 45 is the sound of Joseph's weeping — so loud that the Egyptians in the next room could hear it. This wasn't quiet, dignified emotion. This was a man's whole body releasing decades of grief, betrayal, and loneliness in a single moment of reunion. And then Joseph said the most astonishing thing: "God sent me before you to preserve life."

Joseph looked at the worst thing that ever happened to him and saw the fingerprints of the Almighty. Not excusing the sin, but refusing to let it have the final word. That is the scandalous arithmetic of grace — where El Shaddai takes what was meant for destruction and repurposes it for salvation.