Thank God He Let Me Play Series

William F. Kirk was a columnist who loved baseball, and just before his death he wrote

this poem couched in baseball terms to express his thanks for life.

"The doctor knows what his trained eyes see,

And he says it is the last of the 9th for me;

One more swing while the clouds loom dark, And then I must leave this noisy park.

'Twas a glorious game from the opening bell,

Good plays, bad plays and thrills pellmell;

The speed of it burned my years away,

But I thank my God that He let me play!

Not everybody gets into the game, and many who do strike out before they get on base.

Many others are left on base and never get home to make their efforts count. Joseph felt

this way when he was in the pit and then in prison. God had taken him out of play and put

him on the bench. He thought he was in there pitching and really on the ball, but his brother

said he was a foul ball and off base, and so they sent him to the dugout. His brother Judah

went to bat for him, and so he wasn't out in left field, but got a rain check on the game of life,

and he was sold into slavery rather than left to perish in the pit.

It took Joseph several innings to learn the score, but he finally realized he had not struck

out after all. It was about 20 years later (that is a baseball park figure) when the final inning

arrived and he was the pitcher. He tells his brothers that even though they broke the rules

of fair play, the umpire, which was God, was not throwing them out of the game. Instead He

is saying "play ball". He is giving them a second chance. Joseph is saying to them that the

grace of God has taken their evil deed and turned it into a great good. He took their foul

ball and made it, not only a fair ball, but a home run. He turned their devilish plot into a

divine plan of deliverance. The bottom line is that all 12 brothers could end their life by

saying thank God He let me play.

They all had plenty of trials and hardships, and some of them lost their contracts and

suffered a lot of penalties, but God let them play the game of life and become the foundation

for His chosen people. That is the number one basis for Thanksgiving. It is just the fact that

God has let you play the game. All of us are only here today because God has let us play the

game of life. There was hundreds of thousands of other potential players when you were

conceived, but God chose you to get in the game. The theological term for this is called

providence. It is God's working in history to determine who gets to play the game, and who

gets to win the game.

One of the notable themes of the account of Joseph is his gratitude for God's providence

in his life. Providence means God's providing hand for protection and progress. When all

goes well and Murphy's Law is counteracted so that even bad things work out for good, that

is what we call providential. One of the synonyms for providence in the dictionary is lucky.

That is the secular perspective. They would look at Joseph's life and say he was just lucky.

But when you see the Lord in charge, and not impersonal luck, you call it providence.

Joseph is so aware of the hand of God in his life that he just keeps on repeating it. In

verse 5 he says, "God sent me ahead of you." In verse 7 he says, "God sent me ahead of you

to preserve and save you." In verse 8 he says, "It was not you but God who sent me here."

In verse 9 he says, "God has made me lord of all Egypt." Joseph was not blind to all the

human hands in his history. His brothers sold him to the Midianites, and they carried him to

Egypt. The lying wife of Potipher put him in prison where he met the chief cup bearer of Pharaoh,

and he finally told Pharaoh about his ability to interpret dreams. Pharaoh made

the decision to put him in charge of the country. A lot of people are playing a role in h

is life, but Joseph knows that the hand behind them all is God's hand. Everybody was just doing

their own thing, but God was the one who was using it all to achieve the goal of salvation.

The reason Joseph could forgive his brothers was because he saw the hand of God in