When Things Seem Futile

[This is the journal entry for my quiet time with God yesterday.]

Look: “‘And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you…

“... it was not you who sent me here, but God…” (Genesis 45:5, 8)

The speaker is Joseph, son of Jacob, grandson of Isaac, and great-grandson of Abraham. He lived about 1900 years before the birth of Jesus. He’s speaking to his brothers.

Years before, resentful of their father’s favor of Joseph and Joseph’s superior attitude toward them, the brothers had sold Joseph into slavery, convincing Jacob that his son had actually been killed by a wild animal.

But now the brothers stood before Joseph, who had been effectively made the prime minister of Egypt.

It would have been an opportune time for Joseph to take revenge on his brothers for his years of slavery and forced separation from his family.

Instead, Joseph believes that, as he will articulate more succinctly in Genesis 50, while his brothers meant their action for evil, maybe even death, to Joseph, God used their action to take Joseph to the exact place he needed to be, to accomplish good. 

Joseph, the dreamer, interpreter of dreams, and person with a gift for administration, was, as head of Pharaoh’s government in Egypt, able to institute a program whereby the government held surplus crops in reserve during flush years for distribution and sale during the subsequent years of famine. By this work, Joseph was even able to save his own people, the descendants of Abraham, ancient Israel, so that they could continue to be God’s light to the nations...and ultimately, become the people from whom Jesus, the Light and the Savior of the world, would come.

Listen: When someone has hurt me, my impulse is to hurt them back. 

Or, at the very least, ignore them, insult them, or be disdainful of them.

Now, when a person is physically, emotionally, or sexually abusive to us, avoidance is a good idea. God doesn’t expect me to deliberately subject myself to danger. 

That’s why Jesus refused the devil’s temptation to hurl Himself from the pinnacle of the temple. We tempt God when we mistake faith for fatalism and simply acquiesce to our own harm. Even though God protects His people, He doesn’t protect them from taking unwise risks, like not wearing a helmet while riding on a motorcycle or texting while driving, to use two examples.

But as Joseph stands before his brothers, he holds all the cards. He has power. His brothers’ families are at risk of dying off from the famine. Joseph is the second-most powerful man in Egypt who has gone through slavery and imprisonment for years because of the actions of his brothers. It would have been so easy--and, in the eyes of the world, justified--to put his brothers into slavery, hold them in prison, or even kill them. 

He sees things differently. He’s grateful to be positioned to save his father’s people and to forgive the brothers.

Joseph seems never to have forgotten God, worshiping and obeying Him even through his long captivity. He had resisted when Potiphar’s wife’s attempts at seduction by saying that he couldn’t violate either God’s will or Potiphar’s trust by having sex with her. He told the Pharaoh that God--Israel's Yahweh--who gives interpretations to dreams.

In the verses that caught my attention today, Joseph sees beyond his own pain to see that God, Who might have seemed far away or even absent during his years of slavery, actually had been with him all along and actually had a reason for sending him to Egypt in the first place.

Not all the painful circumstances we find ourselves in are sent to us by God, of course. Job, for example, endured hardships that came from Satan. Sometimes the fallen world is where our hurts come from. Sometimes those hurts come from our own stupid, silly, or sinful actions.

But wherever we find ourselves, God can transform the seeming futility of painful circumstances and help us live for His purposes within them. Joseph knew this.

I get fussy. I like things to go the way I want them to go and when they don’t, I can bellyache. There’s no record of Joseph bellyaching. He followed God and sought to be faithful where he was.

Respond: Lord, by the power of the Holy Spirit, help me to be faithful where I am today. Forgive my fussiness and bellyaching. Help me to trust that You never forsake me and are always there for me. Jesus' death and resurrection prove that. Thank You for the forgiveness of my sins and for Your resurrection promise given to all who trust in Christ. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen

[The painting is Joseph Recognized by His Brothers by Marc Chagall.] 

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]