This week we are reading the story of Joseph in Genesis 37: 3-8, 17b-22, 26-34 and 50:15-21. This is an emotionally complex story- a novella maybe like none other in the Hebrew Bible. It's a story where love unequally distributed causes hatred among brothers; a story where obligation and affection get mixed up in complicated ways, and people get so turned around that they actually think deception will make everything less complicated. And it raises the question – why do things turn out the way they do? That question and the rocky emotional landscape of this story surely ring true in our messy human lives.