Last time we looked at how challenging it is when our hopes seem to take so much longer than we expected. Today’s study reminds us that God is working in the details to prepare us for what He has planned next and that we need to pay attention to what the Lord is doing in our lives because we just don’t know when or how quickly things can change. It is a great comfort to know that God is working out His plan and we can trust Him even when we don’t know what is going on, however, will we have learnt what we need to when God changes the season? Will our trials have done the work God intended them to? Let’s have a look at how Joseph faired in these things as we look at chapter 6 of Living In the Light of Inextinguishable Hope – The Gospel According to Joseph by Iain M. Duguid and Matthew P. Harmon.
Ch 6 BECOMING FRUITFUL IN THE LAND OF YOUR AFFLICTION (GEN 41)
What a difference a day makes! For Joseph, this day must have dawned like any other. He dressed in the same prison clothing and began to perform the same prison duties as always. Two years had passed since the cupbearer had been released, and Joseph’s hopes that he might be remembered had long since evaporated. Then, in the midst of his duties, there was an urgent summons: “Run! Shave! Change your clothes! Pharaoh has summoned you into his presence!” Joseph’s period in the pit ended even more dramatically and suddenly than it had begun. He went from the pit to the peak, from prison cell to Pharaoh’s right hand, in the course of a single day. How do you cope with such a rapid change in your fortunes? You might think that it would be easy. Yet affluence and prosperity have their own temptations and challenges. Painful memories may continue to dog you. Even when the present seems good, the past still casts its long shadow over you. Every life has its own struggles.
In chapter 41 of Genesis, we see Joseph exhibiting the same qualities in prosperity that he learned during his long period of painful endurance in the pit. In the names that he gave to his sons, we also see him wrestling with the demons of his past. Joseph thought hard about the question, “What is God up to in the pits and peaks of my life?” His answers will challenge all of us to think more clearly about the meaning of our own sufferings in this dysfunctional and dangerous world.
Iain M. Duguid and Matthew P. Harmon, Living in the Light of Inextinguishable Hope: The Gospel according to Joseph, ed. Iain M. Duguid, The Gospel according to the Old Testament (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2013), 75–76.
Before our study and discussion, it would be good to refresh yourself with Gen 41 …
see you soon …