Through the Trials

I have been learning about Joseph lately at my church. Joseph's story, found beginning in Genesis 15 with his great grandfather Abraham and continuing through the end of Genesis, is full of trials, hardships, persecutions. There is much opportunity here. Joseph had the opportunity to become bitter, resentful, angry, hardened, and all around ugly in his imprisonment and slavery. But he didn't.

Background: He was his father's favorite son because his mother was his father's favorite wife. Messed up already? Favoritism, polygamy, not a good start for Joseph, though his father meant well, I'm sure. His brothers are angry enough at him to kill him, but then decide to sell him instead so they can get some money from their brother's ruin. So he's a slave, then he's wrongfully accused of trying to seduce a woman who, in reality, had been trying to seduce him. Prison. Years go by. Not just days, but YEARS. Not only is he in prison, but he's forgotten there, assumed dead by his family, assumed guilty by his slaveowners, he would be reasonable to be hopeless. Randomly the king, Pharoah himself, has a confusing dream and Joseph gets to interpret it. All the credit to God for the interpretation, for the physical freedom that comes because Pharoah makes him second-in-command. 9 years go by in this new position.

And all this time, Joseph had no assurance that God's plan would work for good. No idea if those dreams he had as a child of his brothers bowing down to him would ever happen. No idea if he would ever be reunited with his family so that they would even have the chance to bow down to him. He doesn't seem to care about them bowing down to him. He just wants to see them again. And he has NO ASSURANCE that this will ever happen. But he has faith that God is big and able to save and THAT GOD IS GOOD EVEN IF HE DOESN'T SAVE HIM FROM HIS TRIALS.

Wow.

It is tempting to think that Joseph is some kind of super human. He isn't sinless, but he seems the picture of perfection, right? Yet, he's really just like you and me, a human from a somewhat dysfunctional family living with the effects of childhood feuds and relationships. He's far from home and living in circumstances beyond his control. He has no control over his circumstances, but he recognizes that he does have control over who he places his trust in. And even though by his circumstances it seems like God has failed him time and again, Joseph's faith is in a God who is personal, and who must have been speaking to his heart as Joseph sought him or Joseph long ago would have given up on God. But Joseph stayed open, God kept whispering, and God kept working.

Through the trials, Joseph saw opportunity to serve. He was honored by his slave owner and the prison guard as a man with integrity, and he was rewarded in both circumstances for that. Then again with Pharoah. Through his trials, he kept his eyes on God. What a beautiful opportunity that we all have. We can't see the future, how things are going to work out. We can't see the bigger picture, how things are inter-related and working together for good. But God can, and he can change any evil intent, any evil action for good in the hearts and lives of his people, his creation. God is bigger. Joseph was not. Joseph was like me: just a blind, sinful wanderer.

Helen Rosevere, a white woman, a doctor, in the Congo years ago, in the midst of being beaten, abused, heard God say this to her heart: "Can you thank me for trusting you with this, even if I'd never tell you why?" I pray that I can do that. My history with this is rocky...at best. But what a great cloud of examples we have all around us, both alive now and from the past, to exemplify blind faith in the midst of uncertainty, beautiful trust in a worthy God in the midst of even the ugliest of circumstances.