God’s reconciling movement in the world still and always hinges on forgiveness. Everyone has access, because the dramatic moment of Genesis 45 longs to be played out again every time someone is wronged. A pope steps into an Italian jail cell and forgives his would-be assassin; a grieving mother walks across a tense courtroom to embrace the man whose drunk driving snatched away her son’s life; in South Africa, race inconceivably forgives race. Joseph’s God lives on in a new form. A wife forgives her husband, a friend forgives his friend, an enemy forgives enemy—reconciliation breaks out in these moments, and suddenly the position of the victim has radically changed. In the moment of forgiveness, the wronged one is transformed from critic of the world as it is to cocreator with God of a brand-new world. And in that new creation, a light comes on: maybe our world is not so different from Joseph’s after all. Maybe forgiveness and reconciliation are God’s true prosperity.
