Joining Joseph
Soul Snack 67/12 ... Joining Joseph
Joseph was the boy of betrayal. Betrayal dogged his entry into manhood.
He was too the brunt of hatred and the despised younger brother.
Plotted against, lied about and sold into slavery was how his adult life began.
Burdened in a foreign land of unknown language still he remained a young man of intrepid integrity.
Yet his Egyptian family was to be no more gracious to him than his birth family. Integrity his desire and action but betrayal again received.
One day he (Joseph) went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. She (his master's wife) caught him by his cloak and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house... Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined. (Gen 39:11-12, 20)
Now imprisoned in a jail and not a dry well he would still unjustly languish and suffer, but his integrity would still rule.
In jail he would not betray himself or his God any more than he would betray his brothers or his master's trust with an immoral wife.
In prison he walked with God, interpreted dreams, sowed grace and requested reciprocity. Finally Joseph would be restored, in fact elevated from his jail cell to the second highest position in the land. By now he had learned that God can still make the faithful fruitful within the land of suffering.
Upon his release from jail he also knew that a land of pain God would water to become paradise ~ for the impossible continues to be available to those who rely on the eternal.
Today's Soul Snippet:
The presence of comfort is the rescue of the human spirit. - Lam 1:16