tell me a good story!

Does your life have a redemption story? What about a transformational one? Has your faith ever been rocked, only to bring you to an "Ah-ha" moment, and your whole outlook is never the same? 

The Bible has a handful of stories that come across as random, bizarre, and definitely not ones that are typically chosen for Sunday School class. At first read, these stories feel out of place and the message behind the scenes is neither clear nor understood. At least this has been my experience. 

But just as any other portion of God's Word, it's in there for good purpose and for our learning. Rom.15:4

Genesis 38 - Judah and Tamar. Remember that one? The story begins by breaking away from the script on Joseph's young, eventful life. Judah decides to get away from family and go start fresh. He'd been all about personal gain. He had no problem voicing the outrageous, the unthinkable, the dirty money plan. 

Other than his mother praising the Lord at his birth, there is nothing good or redemptive about this man's life. He does not appear to have chosen the faith of his fathers.  

Judah does the normal thing and starts a family. Years pass and as was custom, he found a wife for his firstborn. I don't know what it was about the girl Tamar, but she ended up being a great choice for the family. Judah finds out later just how great. When he acknowledges his fault publicly, particularly for the sake of a woman who he sentenced to be burnt, it did something inside of this son of Jacob. His own lack of righteousness became crystal clear in comparison to someone of much lower status and of no significant spiritual heritage. Though he had stepped away, he was still of the lineage of Abraham, the friend of God. 

Fast forward to Judah and his brothers going to Egypt, their father worried and perplexed. By this point he has established good standing back at home and uses it in offering assurance to Jacob. He tenderly expresses ownership, responsibility, and personal blame should he not fulfil his word. Next chapter we find him bravely stepping forward to speak in the same fashion to the man he had no idea was Joseph, the one who remembered his cruel, calloused nature. Joseph recognized a transformed life, and you know the rest of the story; a beautiful, redemptive one. 

Judah, a once hardened, what's-in-it-for-me dealer, to at last an honorable, selfless man who lays down his life for others, a picture of Christ, crowned with the greatest of blessings. 

And Tamar, the remarkable young woman who dared to risk everything, trusting that justice would be served by the man who belonged to the highest Judge, the God of gods. Her faith solid gold, inserted into the greatest story of all.