Dai­ly Reflec­tion
July 12, 2007

We often times hear of tragedies with inno­cent vic­tims suf­fer­ing, and crimes with peo­ple unjust­ly con­demned and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters leav­ing thou­sands dead and home­less. The usu­al reac­tion is to ques­tion why God allows these things to hap­pen. And the accept­able expla­na­tion is that his ways are not our ways and he knows how to bring good out of these evils.

Well in our first read­ing today, we have a per­fect exam­ple of how this expla­na­tion rings true. Joseph was an irri­tant to his broth­ers who end­ed up hat­ing him, sell­ing him into slav­ery and writ­ing him off as dead. How­ev­er, in the mean­time, because of the tal­ents God had giv­en Joseph, along with hard work and the rep­u­ta­tion he acquired, he was able to fore­warn the Pharaoh of a future drought and the star­va­tion that would face the Egyptians.

In return the Pharaoh reward­ed him with ulti­mate pow­er and put him in charge of prepar­ing for the time of the drought. He planned the build­ing of stor­age facil­i­ties dur­ing the times of plen­ty and laid away a por­tion of the har­vest to cov­er the dry years. By con­ser­va­tion and judi­cious dis­pen­sa­tion of the grain they had, he not only saved the lives of numer­ous Egyp­tians but even many of the peo­ple from sur­round­ing coun­tries. Among them was the fam­i­ly of Jacob, Joseph’s own broth­ers. They didn’t rec­og­nize him after so many years nor did Joseph ini­tial­ly make him­self known to them. But after a cou­ple of beg­ging trips to Egypt for sup­plies and ful­fill­ing con­di­tions that Joseph demand­ed of them, he was no longer able to con­trol his emo­tions or with­hold his forgiveness.

“Come clos­er to me,” he told his broth­ers. “I am your broth­er Joseph, whom you once sold into Egypt. But do not be dis­tressed, and do not reproach your­selves for hav­ing sold me here. It was real­ly for the sake of sav­ing lives that God sent me here ahead of you.”

Too often we fail to rec­og­nize the good that fol­lows tragedies and tri­als. Some­times that’s because those results hap­pen at a much lat­er time. Or again because the con­nec­tion may be so sub­tle that it goes unde­tect­ed. One mes­sage that comes through this scrip­ture read­ing reminds us that God is in con­trol. His ulti­mate plan is always direct­ed with wis­dom and love toward that end which in one way or anoth­er will even­tu­al­ly bring about our spir­i­tu­al, tem­po­ral and eter­nal wellbeing.