He Was There All Along
I’ve been reading Joseph’s story, and one sentence keeps stopping me.
“The Lord was with Joseph.” ~ Genesis 39:2 (ESV)
What gets me is not that this sentence appears when Joseph becomes powerful.
It appears much earlier.
When his life is falling apart.
Joseph is seventeen when his brothers sell him.
Before that, they had even talked about killing him.
~ Genesis 37:2, 18–28 (ESV)
Then he is taken to Egypt.
He serves in Potiphar’s house.
He does well there.
And for a moment, maybe it looks like his life is finally becoming stable again.
Until Potiphar’s wife lies about him.
Joseph is falsely accused.
And he ends up in prison for something he did not do.
~ Genesis 39:7–20 (ESV)
And still…
the Bible says:
“But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love.” ~ Genesis 39:21 (ESV)
Not,
“The Lord returned to Joseph.”
Not,
“The Lord finally remembered Joseph.”
He was already there.
Even in the place Joseph probably wanted to escape more than anything.
That stayed with me.
Because sometimes we think God being with us should look like everything working out.
But Joseph’s story shows something different.
God can be with you while your life looks nothing like what you hoped it would.
God can be with you in the unfair chapter.
In the season you would never have chosen for yourself.
And somehow, even there, Joseph succeeds.
The keeper of the prison trusts him with the other prisoners and puts him in charge.
And once again, Scripture tells us why:
“The Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed.” ~ Genesis 39:23 (ESV)
I keep coming back to that.
Joseph was successful…
in prison.
In a place he didn’t choose.
In a place he didn’t deserve to be.
In a place he was never meant to remain forever.
And still, God allowed him to flourish there.
Maybe that’s something I needed to read.
Because sometimes we think we can only flourish once God gets us where we’re supposed to be.
Once the circumstances change.
Once the prayer is answered.
Once we’re finally out of the place we never wanted to be in.
But Joseph’s story reminds me that God doesn’t have to wait for the next chapter to be God.
He was already with Joseph there.
Then Joseph interprets the dream of Pharaoh’s cupbearer.
And for the first time, it seems like there might finally be a way out.
Joseph asks him:
“Only remember me, when it is well with you.” ~ Genesis 40:14 (ESV)
The cupbearer leaves prison.
And then:
“Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.” ~ Genesis 40:23 (ESV)
And Genesis 41 begins with words that almost hurt once you know what Joseph was waiting for:
“After two whole years…” ~ Genesis 41:1 (ESV)
Two whole years.
That part hurts to read.
Because sometimes the hardest thing is not being rejected.
It’s being forgotten.
Someone promises they will remember you.
And then life moves on for them…
while you are still sitting in the same place.
But people forgetting Joseph did not mean God had forgotten him.
Two years later, Pharaoh has a dream.
And suddenly the very gift Joseph had been using in prison becomes the reason his name is remembered.
Joseph is brought before Pharaoh.
And by the end of that encounter, the prisoner is standing over Egypt.
Joseph is thirty years old.
“Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” ~ Genesis 41:46 (ESV)
He was seventeen when his story began.
Now he is thirty.
Thirteen years.
Thirteen years between being sold and standing before Pharaoh.
And when I read that, I wonder how many times Joseph must have questioned everything.
How many nights he wondered whether the dreams God gave him when he was young meant anything anymore.
And yet, his story did not end in prison.
Later Joseph has his first son and calls him Manasseh:
“For,” he said, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house.” ~ Genesis 41:51 (ESV)
But what I find fascinating is that “forgetting” did not mean Joseph stopped feeling.
Because when his brothers eventually appear before him, everything comes back.
He recognizes them immediately.
They do not recognize him.
He hears them talking among themselves about what they did to him all those years ago.
And Joseph turns away…
and cries.
“Then he turned away from them and wept.” ~ Genesis 42:24 (ESV)
Later he sees Benjamin.
Again, Joseph has to leave the room because he is overwhelmed.
“Then Joseph hurried out, for his compassion grew warm for his brother, and he sought a place to weep.” ~ Genesis 43:30 (ESV)
And when he finally tells his brothers who he is, he doesn’t quietly shed a tear.
He breaks.
“And he wept aloud, so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it.” ~ Genesis 45:2 (ESV)
Then Benjamin:
“Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them.” ~ Genesis 45:14–15 (ESV)
Later Joseph weeps when he is reunited with his father.
~ Genesis 46:29 (ESV)
He weeps when his father dies.
~ Genesis 50:1 (ESV)
And he weeps again when his brothers are afraid that he will finally take revenge on them.
~ Genesis 50:17 (ESV)
Joseph forgave.
Joseph understood that God had worked through his story.
Joseph became powerful.
And still…
Joseph cried.
I love that.
Because healing did not make him emotionless.
Forgiveness did not erase memory.
Understanding what God had done did not suddenly make what happened to him okay.
And maybe that’s what makes his words near the end of Genesis so powerful:
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” ~ Genesis 50:20 (ESV)
He doesn’t rewrite his past.
He doesn’t call evil good simply because something good eventually came from it.
He knows exactly what his brothers did to him.
But he also knows that what they did to him was never powerful enough to decide what would become of him.
And maybe that’s what I want to remember most about Joseph’s story.
Not that everything eventually worked out.
Not that he became powerful.
Not even that one day he could finally understand what God had been doing.
But that God was there before any of that happened.
He was there when Joseph was seventeen.
He was there in the pit.
He was there when Joseph was sold.
He was there in Potiphar’s house.
He was there when Joseph was falsely accused.
He was there in prison.
He was there while Joseph succeeded in a place he never should have been in.
He was there during those two years when the cupbearer had forgotten his name.
He was there before Pharaoh ever called for him.
And He was there when Joseph finally stood on the other side of everything he had survived.
Joseph’s circumstances changed again and again.
His title changed.
His home changed.
The people around him changed.
His entire life changed beyond recognition.
But one thing remained.
The Lord was with Joseph.
Maybe that’s why those few words in Genesis 39 won’t leave me alone.
Because they weren’t written after the happy ending.
They were written in the middle of the story.
Before Joseph knew how anything would turn out.
And I think that’s what I want to carry with me when I close my Bible.
Not the promise that every difficult chapter will end exactly the way I want it to.
Not the promise that I will understand everything that happens to me.
But the reminder that God’s presence isn’t something I have to wait for until life gets better.
The God who was with Joseph in Pharaoh’s palace was the same God who was with him in the prison.
The circumstances changed.
God’s presence didn’t.
He was there all along.