The last fourteen chapters of Genesis tell a rollicking “riches to rags to riches to rags to redemption” story. In what amounts to a compelling and finely-wrought novella, we follow a young man named Joseph for about 13 years, beginning when he is about 17 years old through a sequence of dramatic adventures. It’s a story of detours and destiny that instructs us on what to do when where we thought we were going and where our lives actually take us are two very different places. In the end, it’s also a story of how God accomplishes His redemptive purposes in the world, no matter what else is happening.
You may recall the arc of the story. Joseph, his father Jacob’s favorite, receives a beautiful coat from his dad. This doesn’t sit well with Joseph’s jealous brothers even before Joseph then tells them about a dream he’s had suggesting his brothers will soon be bowing down before him.
Perhaps the first lesson of Joseph’s story is that if you have such a dream, just keep it to yourself, because for his brothers, this is the last straw. They cast him deep into a hole in the desert to die before deciding instead to sell him to a band of slave traders.
Joseph ends up in the household of a powerful Egyptian named Potiphar, to whom he makes himself indispensable until Potiphar’s wife decides she wants the handsome Joseph for herself. When Joseph refuses her advances, she accuses him of assault. Despite all he’s done to climb back up out of the hole he was in, he’s now sent off to prison. In jail, Joseph again makes himself useful, becoming the warden’s right hand man, until one day, two prisoners—former servants of Pharoah—have curious dreams that Joseph interprets. When one is freed, Joseph himself is called before Pharaoh, and after predicting an approaching famine from the details of Pharoah’s own dream, Joseph is placed in charge of the nation’s preparations for it.
As the famine then indeed arrives, Joseph’s brothers come down from Canaan seeking some Egyptian grain, and though they fail to recognize him, Joseph recognizes them. Following some additional twists and turns, Joseph returns grace for the evil they'd earlier shown him, saves everyone, and finally reveals himself.
As the adventure unfolds, it’s almost as if there are two stories going on—one terrifically good and the other unimaginably bad—which gives rise to perhaps the most crucial lesson of Joseph’s story, and it’s this: When you’re detoured like Joseph, as my old friend and teacher Louie Giglio used to say, always remember there are, in fact, two stories going on—one you see and one you don’t. While the one we see with our human eyes can sometimes look bleak, even hopeless, what our faith tells us is that even if we don’t see it, there’s another story going on. Though it may remain invisible for weeks, months, or even years, with God there’s always a second story going on, and it’s the one through which God is working out His own redemptive purposes, both in our world and in our lives as we seek to follow Him.
Joseph’s life also instructs us that just as God is not at rest behind the scenes during our detours, we shouldn’t be either. Sometimes we speak of surrendering a situation to God but fail to understand that surrendering isn’t necessarily a passive thing. Though Joseph trusts God, he’s also constantly battling his way up and out, using his God-given gifts and every opportunity before him.
The final lesson of Joseph’s topsy-turvy life comes after the famine is over, and Jacob, the father, dies of old age. With their father gone, Joseph’s brothers fear that Joseph will now take revenge on them. However, Joseph—firmly aligned with God’s redemptive purposes—tells his brothers this instead:
Do not be afraid! For am I in the place of God? Now you, you planned ill against me, (but) God planned-it-over for good in order to do (as is) this very day—to keep many people alive...So-now, do not be afraid! I myself will sustain you and your little-ones.
And there it is: the final truth we might glean from Joseph’s story is that in what seems to be a most providential way, our detours often place before us an opportunity to give grace to those who detoured us, while at the same time offering us a chance to advance the redemptive plotline that resides at the very heart of God’s second story.
God, help us trust in Your second story, the one that plans things over for good and leads us gracefully home. Amen.
Genesis 50: 19b-21, Fox, Everett, translator, The Five Books of Moses, Schocken Books Inc.,1997.
