Enjoy Life, Enjoy God

JOSEPH, OUR TEACHER

February 16, 2010

We are students and learn our life lessons by many diverse means, sometimes by positive example, others, negative; sometimes in a classroom, others, just by watching, even doing.

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Joseph named his firstborn Manasseh and said, "It is because God has made me forget all my trouble and all my father's household." The second son he named Ephraim and said, "It is because God has made me fruitful in the land of my suffering."
- Genesis 41:52,53 TNIV
 

I've been reading the Joseph Saga (Genesis 37-50) lately. It's the drama of everything going wrong in a person's life, of hatred, family bickering, repeated injustice inflicted on Joseph, and the providence of God. Yet when Joseph reaches the pinnacle of greatness and power, even the birth of his first two sons, he names them as reminders of the challenges that he has endured. The names of his sons are living testimonies not only of his triumph, but God seeing him through it all.

Joseph can be a teacher for us. To follow Christ is not to have all our needs met, and move to easy street with problems solved. A superficial scan of the Bible's message proves that. But Joseph invites us to be the person God made us to be, the very best person, such that no matter the circumstance, God will make us fruitful, and we will be faithful.
Joyfully,

Dale Patterson