Meant for Evil, Used for Good

Even Though, part 3

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” — Genesis 50:20 (NIV)

Joseph was loved more by his father Jacob than any of Joseph's siblings. Joseph was 17 years old when out of hatred and jealousy his brothers threw him into a dry cistern in the wilderness. Then the brothers sat down to eat. Picture it. A teenager sitting in an empty pit, listening to his siblings eat and pass food over his head.

That morning he was his father’s favorite, wearing the ornate robe Jacob had made for him (Genesis 37:3). By the time the sun went down Joseph was merchandise, sold to passing traders for twenty pieces of silver and carried off toward Egypt.

That is where Joseph's “even though” begins. And it does not resolve quickly.

The brothers took Joseph's robe, dipped it in the blood of a goat, and let their father believe a wild animal had killed his son. Jacob grieved for years over a boy who was still alive.

Joseph, meanwhile, kept falling. He landed in the house of Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officials, and worked hard enough to be trusted with everything. “The LORD was with Joseph so that he prospered” (Genesis 39:2 NIV). Then Potiphar’s wife lied about him, and the reward for his integrity was a prison cell.

Read that again. Joseph did the right thing, and it cost him his freedom.

Even though Joseph was thrown into prison the refrain holds: “the LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden” (Genesis 39:21 NIV). While in prison, Joseph interpreted the dreams of two fellow prisoners and humbly gave God the credit: “Do not interpretations belong to God?” (Genesis 40:8 NIV). One of those men, Pharaoh’s cupbearer, was restored to his post and promised to remember him when he was released from prison. He forgot. Joseph sat in that cell two more years.

Count the losses. A family that turned on him. A master who believed a lie. A friend who forgot a promise. Most of his 20s were spent as a slave or a prisoner in a country not his own, with no evidence the dreams of his youth would ever come true (Genesis 37:5-11).

This is the part we skip when we tell the story. We jump to the outcome. Joseph did not get to jump. He lived every ordinary, undramatic day of it without knowing how it might end. But Joseph knew in Whom he should place his trust throughout these anxious and difficult circumstances.

Then - it turned. Pharaoh had a dream no one could interpret, and the cupbearer finally remembered Joseph sitting in the prison. Joseph was called up and with the Lord’s guidance Joseph interpreted seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. Pharaoh set Joseph over all of Egypt. When the famine came, it reached back to Canaan and it drove his brothers down to Egypt for grain, where they bowed low before a ruler they did not recognize as the brother they had sold.

Years later, Joseph’s father still alive and the brothers’ guilt exposed, the brothers braced for revenge. Joseph wept instead. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20 NIV).

Notice what Joseph does not say. He does not pretend being thrown in the pit was not real, or that the prison was secretly a gift, or that his brothers had not meant exactly what they did. The harm was harm. He names it. And in the same breath he tells the truth that had been holding nearly twenty years together: God was at work the whole time, in the pit and the prison cell and the long-forgotten stretches, toward a good that Joseph could never have engineered or imagined on his own.

You may be somewhere in the middle of your own account right now. The part before the turn. The years that feel wasted, where integrity costs you something and the promise keeps getting forgotten. Joseph could not see the outcome from the bottom of the pit either. He simply kept walking with God, Who was walking with him.

Whatever this season holds, even though it looks dark or unfair or stalled, God is faithful, and He invites you to hand Him your fear and your hope alike. “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7 NIV).

Even though. Two small words. From the bottom of a pit, or sitting in prison, still true.

For Reflection

1. Where are you in Joseph’s story right now — the pit, the long wait, or the turn?

2. Is there a place where doing the right thing has cost you, and you’re still waiting to see why?

3. What would change if you trusted that God is at work in the part of your story you can’t yet explain?

Prayer

Father, You were with Joseph in the pit and in prison every step of the way and long before You raised him up. Be that near to us each and every day, especially so in the parts of our story we cannot yet understand. May we live surrendered to Your perfect will for our lives, wherever it takes us. And where we have been harmed for doing good, we trust You to work even that for good. You are the way and the truth and the life. Amen.