He was blessed.
Well, sort of.
Technically as a son of Jacob, he was automatically in line for the promise of a chosen people. Given the current circumstances, there was a really good chance that God had decided to go with the other eleven and he would be the outcast left to die in a foreign land with no one to continue his name.
There was a time when this was unthinkable. A time when he was the favoured one.
One favoured not just by his Father but by the God of his father.
He had had dreams where his family were bowing to him.
Dreams where he was the exceptional man in the bunch.
Those dreams had caused him to live differently.
He told the truth. He honoured his parents. He fled immorality and what did he have to show for it?
A life sentence as head prisoner in a foreign jail.
People had been cast out in Abraham’s line. Ishmael was not the son of Sarah and so not in line for the blessing. Esau had sold his birthright for a pot of stew and forfieted the prized position.
Even the cast outs were doing much much better than he was.
Ishamel had gone on to be a nation, some of whose people’s had been involved in his involuntary migration to Egypt.
Esau had done pretty well for himself with his multiple wives and plentiful children.
Joseph’s wasn’t much of a life. Paying for a crime he didn’t commit, a victim of circumstances that had knocked the hope right out of him.
On a good day he could argue that God was against him.
The big hole in that argument was that regardless of how bad things got, he rose to the top of every bad pile.
In Potiphar’s house he had seen his work prosper; that had been the reason for his elevation and probably the same reason his mistress had set her eyes on him.
In prison he had similar circumstances. He had risen to be the highest ranked prisoner among the horde.
These things made it hard to believe that God had completely washed his hands of him.
He still didn’t have much of a future.
He had once hoped things would change after correctly predicting that Pharaoh’s butler would go free.
After more than a year of silence, the painful truth was he had been forgotten.
I can only imagine that these thoughts passed through the mind of Joseph because if there was the abundance of one thing in jail, it was the time to think.
Maybe that’s you. You’re not necessarily in jail but you’re a million miles from where you thought you would be.
You thought you would be the stand out in your family, you’re not.
You ordered your life to honour God hoping he would honour you.
Your current reality is that very few in their right minds would ever want to trade places with you.
In spite of everything, you also can’t claim total abandonment. In the mire that is your life you’re still a standout. People can tell you have favour, except you know that given the right environment you’re capable of blooming so much more.
You don’t see a good future or maybe the one time you did, that future evaporated into the amorphous world of ‘if only’.
Like Joseph you can’t tell how your story ends. Like Joseph you wonder whether God is for you or against you.
Unlike Joseph, you know how Joseph’s story ended.
God had not forgotten.
God did come through.
He was elevated.
He was set apart from his family.
He was favoured by God.
And now the whole world knows it.
I wish I could tell how your story ends.
I don’t know the twists and turns you’ve had to go through.
I do know God has not forgotten.
I do know God will come through.
Don’t discount what God is able to do.
Perhaps yours will be a story that the whole world hears
A story where you come out with indisputable favour.
Joseph set a precedent in his family.
Perhaps God is doing the same with you.
Perhaps.