Not the end of the story
This morning I was reading in Genesis chapters 39 and 40, the well known account of Joseph’s trials in Egypt. Joseph is a Bible character who has long been an inspiration to me because it seems that, despite his early immaturity in Genesis 37, he was a person who consistently sought to make right choices, and we read over and over again that, “the Lord was with him."
Joseph’s story is told in just a few short chapters of the Bible; only two or three chapters span the time from when he was a 17 year old till the time he was 30. A few further chapters bring us to the end of Joseph’s lifetime, and so we all know the end of the story; we know that things began to turn around for him when he was thirty. (Gen 41: 46) But the previous thirteen years were pretty awful: hated by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused of rape, forgotten in prison... Again and again, Joseph was the victim of tragedy and injustice. Yes, we’ve read the last chapter and we know there was a “happy ending,” but what must Joseph have been thinking and feeling when events had only half run their course? It says a couple of times in chapter 39 that God blessed Joseph and gave him success.... but I guess that might all seem kind of relative, if your “blessing” is happening in the context of slavery or of wrongful imprisonment.
The thing that has always stood out to me, however, is that Joseph never seemed to slip into self pity, bitterness, anger, or simply giving up. Did he keep holding on to his God-given dreams or did he abandon them, believing them to be impossible now? Either way, he seems to have kept holding on to God, and this seems to have enabled him to bring the very best out of every situation he found himself in - no matter how awful or injust or just plain wrong it was at the time.
A danger for us is that we look at our lives right here and now, and we evaluate them as if they were already the last chapter of the story. What’s happening in my life right now is not the whole story of my life; it’s just a snapshot, only one chapter among many. If it happens to be a really hard or horrible chapter, that shouldn’t be allowed to eclipse the fact that very many good chapters went before it, and (if I’ve consistently made right choices in life) more good chapters will still come after it.
An old proverb says, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The lesson I learn from Joseph’s life is, “Don’t judge the book by a chapter.” Don’t judge your life, or judge God, on the basis of the one chapter that you find yourself in today. If, like Joseph, we hold on to God and hold on to right attitudes, the last chapter of our story will look very different from the one we find ourselves in today.
