The Story: Chapter 3.
Joseph, a first person narrative
You may not recognize me without my coat. I used to have a coat of many colors that my father gave me. But something happened to that so I can’t wear it anymore. It was given to me by my father, he thought very highly of me. I guess you could probably say I was his favorite. See I was born when he was at an old age. He had given me a special robe that had many colors on it and my brothers soon became aware that I was his favorite and they didn’t have anything nice to say to me at all. And you know that old saying; if you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all…so it was kinda quiet around our house because they didn’t say much to me. Then one day I had a strange dream. I dreamt I was working on the grain with my brothers and my grain stood higher than theirs and that there grain bowed down to my grain. They hated me even more after I told them about this. They thought I intended to rule over them, and then I told them that’s not the end. I told them I had a dream where even the moon and star were told to bow down to me, so yeah they didn’t like this one either.
I will never forget this day though. My brothers were out watching over the sheep, and my father wanted me to go check on them. So I set out to look for them, they weren’t where I initially thought they were but someone helped me find them. I saw them off in the distance, they were doing well and I was excited to see them!
As I got closed though it became evident they weren’t too pumped to see me though. I guess they were still bitter about the dreams or maybe because I was my Dads favorite, but anyways when I reached them, they took my robe – the one that had all of the colors- and they threw me into a well. Can you believe that! You thought your bothers and sisters were bad, mine threw me into a well!!! They planned on leaving me there to die too! They were going to leave me in there until I died from dehydration. As I was down there I could hear them scheming about how to tell my Dad. They took my jacket and rubbed blood on it and they were going to tell my father that a wild animal attacked me. But the next thing I know they’re pulling me out of the well and I think whew they had a change of mind. They’re gonna say hey you just got punked, we were messing with you and we’d laugh about it and head home…but that wasn’t the case. There was a caravan that was passing by and they sold me as a slave to them. Get this, the only reason they didn’t kill me was because they could profit off of me.
So this is crazy right, but I knew God was with me.
Once we got to Egypt they sold me to Potiphar, he was one of Pharos officials. Through all of this God was with me. I mean I was living in the house of an official and he soon saw that the Lord was with me and that he gave me success in everything I did. And because of this I found favor in the eyes of Potiphar. He trusted me and put me in charge of everything in his household. It was great!
But this next part gets a little awkward, but I’ll take a swing at it. As you can tell I am well built and extremely handsome and Potiphar wife took notice and told me to come to bed with her.
I refused I mean eww, seriously, so gross!
I told her that Potiphar has trusted me with so much, and I would not ruin his trust. I told her that God has blessed me in everything I’ve done and that I would not sin against him. So needless to say it was an awkward work environment.
Days went by and I didn’t talk to her and I even tried to not be in the same room as her, but one day when it was just the two of us she grabbed my cloak and tried to pull me to bed. I refused and left the house. Well she started telling everyone a lie! She started telling them that I came onto her. She told her husband Potiphar this and he had me put in jail.
While I was in prison my Lord was with me. Even in as awful place as prison when your lord is with you he can make great things happen. And he did. The lord was with me and the prison warden found favor in me. Just like before I was put in charge of so much, and the warden didn’t worry about anything that was under my responsibility. Because the Lord was with me he made me successful in whatever I did.
When I was in prison I learned some new skills, now I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t learn to dig tunnels with a spoon or how to make shanks out of chicken bones. I learned something much more valuable. I learned how to interpret dreams. God gave me the ability to interpret dreams. While I was in prison I helped interpret some official’s dreams. Now I didn’t think much of it for a while. In fact two years passed and not much happened then one day the pharaoh had a dream that troubled him. He had all of his magicians, and wise men attempt to figure it out but they couldn’t. So I was summoned because word had spread that I could interpret dreams correctly.
Once I got cleaned up met him he asked if I could tell him what his dream meant, I told him the truth. I couldn’t but that God could. SO I heard his dreams and told him that it meant that we were going to have 7 good years of good harvest and 7 years of famine. I made a suggestion to him that we store up food during the good times so we could eat well in the bad times. He loved my idea, and in fact he loved it so much that he put me in charge of his palace. I was placed as second in command. Only the Pharaoh was higher than me, and I had just been in prison a short time ago.
As time went on my interpretation proved to be correct and we had 7 great years followed by 7 bad years. And we were prepared for the bad times because God had given me the power to interpret that dream. We were so prepared that people actually started coming to us from other nations to get food. This was my job to oversee this and one day my story took another dramatic turn. I was doing my work there when in walks my brothers! My brothers! They don’t recognize me because I look different and I have a different language, but I immediately recognize them.
So here I was reunited with my brothers and I didn’t handle it the best way. I had some deceitful moments and there were moments where I wanted revenge for the hardships in my life. But I didn’t act on the revenge. I could have had them killed right there. I could have made their life miserable for what they did to me but I didn’t pursue it and so a question that I get a lot of the time is why? Why didn’t you seek revenge?
Here is why I didn’t seek revenge, it’s because I was so captured by Gods story. God had been with me all along.
When I was so near death – God was with me
When my brothers betrayed me – God was with me
When my character was questioned and I was thrown into prison – God was with me
God was with me all along and I was working according to his purpose and his will. Not my own, not the pharos, I was working for God and his desires
God was at work in the details of my life and accomplishing great things. Knowing that God is working and using bad times in my life, these confusing times, these sad times allowed me to live life freely. It let me live a life where I was able to forgive others. God tested me and built my faith, he built my character all so I could progress his story, his will. All though my story I knew God was with me. There was never a doubt about it. I had 21 years of a hard life and then I had 71 years of living a blessed life.
Maybe we can all look at our lives and look at what we’re going through and instead of feeling down on our luck or upset; we can use these times to figure out how to accomplish God’s goals.
Maybe the low points in your life are just preparing you for something else; the question is will you allow God to work in your life in that way?
