By Pastor Jon
And, therefore, life’s detail has a much larger providence and purpose, than we can sometimes imagine.
When we consider the sovereignty of God through the real-time events of humanity, if we decide to enter the intellectual arena, we can easily use a more detached philosophy, which struggles to integrate trouble, except when considering how God can remove it, because how can God do anything with evil?! But, to be removed from trouble, we must have first entered. And how can that happen?! This means we struggle with the links of this chain, so we often load a false hypothesis of the work of God into our mind, and then reason God must work within this structure.
Again, the practical side of this problem is that life is interconnected. We aren’t disconnected propositions, which is how we internally debate life’s direction, or, how this is externally conversed through the atheistic resistance society. Life is connected, which means good and bad morph throughout life, and we can reason like we are on the receiving end, and we are not quite sure why.
There is much that could be said on this larger angle, but today, and to assist you to more faithfully and fruitfully engage, I want to take a specific slant. To better grasp, you must dig a little, and start a little sooner, and in this piece, I want to offer a circumstance in the life of Joseph, which exemplifies these opening words.
We know about his Magnus Opus expression, out of this general context, from the end of the Book of Genesis, through the following to his concerned-about-retribution brothers:
As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today (Genesis 50:20).
While these are remarkable words, the record for today’s reflection is the period post the dark sexual ethic of Genesis 38, where it reads like a strange relief to examine the circumstance of the name-less wife of Potiphar, and the once be-coated man of many colours.
As I was completing the Daily Bible Reading this day, the following words stood tall, which speak into the context and consequences of Joseph’s pure living stand:
But the LORD was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison (Genesis 39:21).
Do you see what perceives as an existential apparent paradox?
At one level, there is positive affirmation. Joseph has favour, and we know how this term can be positively thrown-about in modern church culture. But notice, this favour is in the cradle of a grave. Prison. Not high on most people’s bucket-lists. “So God, while you’re giving me favour after locating me in prison for doing the right thing, how about getting me out; or, even better, not working all things together through such injustice for my theoretical benefit?!” This is how we can easily project. We can theorise the other way, but for someone else’s benefit, thank you very much.
Joseph’s prison escapade is another micro death-to-life narrative.
This further illustrates how difficult life can be to put together in real time, and why trusting in the character and person of God is absolutely required to live a flourishing life. Many times you can’t even work it out after the fact. You can project. You can cast some theological horizons through your real time, but there is still, why this exact way, and why this precise time?! Life tends to be lived in shades and with nuance. What may be good, could be better, and can be worse. But God is working throughout. And it seems like the more significant the situation, the greater the potential for any deviation to rend our garments like an Old Testament prophet.
Thankfully, I haven’t had Joseph’s type of challenge, but I have lived many years far away from what is ideal; even what can be described as normative.
Then what you gonna do?
Not like you can totally run and hide. Life seemed so much easier reading it on the box!
What we need to believingly remember, and what helps us not only survive, but thrive, is to coordinate our times with the knowledge that God fundamentally is working by grace, which means you must believe the Gospel, and not circumstantially-attach what is happening as a CV-commentary on your own status, standing, position, or righteousness; especially as we are so prone toward this life-disposition. If life, identity, and flourishing is an algorithm that demands an outside-of-ourselves equation, through what is also an eternal computation, we too easily only add-and-subtract in our flesh, and in what is temporal and fading.
And, you must trust that God has the bigger picture, which is so far beyond your ability to put the minute pieces together that, on the scales of reality, it is probably more than likely beyond, to even start this process.
Believe the Gospel.
Know that God is working for something grander than you could imagine, and then knowingly believe that one day, even if you go through a living hell, you will be able to follow your forebear in the Faith, Joseph, even if only at the point of temporal death, and confess, what was intended to destroy you has been for your good, because God is doing a work in your life that will resonate into forever, where the temporal pain will not only be forgotten-as-an-effect, but remembered through how life has gotten the best of any excellence.
This should create resilient hope in the present, because that gift is not only going to keep-on-giving, but will take it next level, into your future.
And you will live it!
This is the subversive seeing-is-believing life prescription!
For the Fame of His Name