Rising Each Time

I am awed by the story of Joseph.  He went from ordinary kid to victimized brother to trusted servant to distrusted servant who was lied against and imprisoned, only to emerge ultimately as the second most powerful leader in the nation.  In the end, he responds to the brothers who had plotted and enacted a cruel vengeance against his perceived arrogance.  Joseph’s words resound through the millenniums, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good.”  I am awed by Joseph’s faith in a sovereign God and the good he ascribes to Him, but I am probably more awed because he held tenaciously to the faith he was taught as a child.  That faith gave him a work ethic that set him above those who worked with him.  His faith refused to transgress the trust that had been placed in him.  It refused to go contrary to the character of his God.  His faith protected him from bitterness and revenge.  His faith immersed him in the love of his God when circumstances were unjust.  It was his faith that could carry on duties beneath the common man.  It was his faith that drew wisdom from God, extended love to those who had abandoned him, and wept with joy over a plan of God that to most of us would have seemed very unfair.
Some can relate all too well to the ups and downs of Joseph’s life.  We’ve been there.  Content with the bounty of our blessings, and then rudely having them snatched from us.  Family members that withdrew their love and their loyalty.  A reputation destroyed with ugly and bitter words.  Promises and dreams that once radiated from the horizon, overshadowed and darkened by the unexpected.  The pressures of work and home taunting us with success and then slamming us against unmet expectations.  How do we respond?  It’s easy to follow our emotional inclinations, but that too leaves us empty and unfulfilled.  It’s harder to be a Joseph who holds tenaciously to his God.  A Joseph who never quits regardless of his circumstances.  When I was in college, we were taught that failure never comes until we quit.  Joseph was not defined by his circumstances.  He was defined by his God.
A poem by an unknown author tells the story of a young boy running a race as his father cheers him on.  To the child’s disappointment and embarrassment he falls, not once, not twice, but three times.  But each time he fell, he found the voice and the face of his father, and he picked himself up and ran again.  No, he did not win the race, but he finished, and he won the applause of the crowd and the affirmation of his father.  The father’s words are for all of us, “Winning is no more than this, to rise each time you fall.”  That’s what Joseph did, and always with his eyes on God.

                                                              – Bev

(Related Bible reading: Genesis 50:14-21)