1 Chronicles 7 Devotional

Sorrow Written into the Record

“Their father Ephraim mourned for many days, and his relatives came to comfort him.”1 Chronicles 7:22 (BSB)

Most of chapter 7 reads like a muster roll: the families of Issachar, Benjamin, Naphtali, Manasseh, Ephraim and Asher. Then one entry stops being a number. Ephraim's sons Ezer and Elead were killed by the men of Gath (7:21). Their father mourned for many days, and his relatives came to comfort him (7:22). When another son was born, Ephraim named him Beriah, because tragedy had come upon his house (7:23).

Scripture does not hurry past that grief or explain it away. The sorrow is written into the family record, with a child's name to carry the memory. Yet the line goes on. A daughter, Sheerah, builds towns (7:24), and Ephraim's descendants lead down to Joshua son of Nun (7:27). God does not erase grief from his people's story, but he does not let it have the last word. A psalm asks God to keep the writer's tears in his bottle, recorded in his book (Psalm 56:8). Your sorrows are not too small, or too old, for him to know.

To think about: What grief have you assumed God has forgotten, and how does this chapter invite you to bring it to him?