The Joseph Factor.
Obstacles aren’t always what they seem. I stared at the tree, whose canopy was large enough to make me concerned about it being blown down in the wrong direction and doing some damage. But I had a nagging concern that I was missing something. As I examined the situation, the tree in back of the first was higher and more dangerous. See the upper sketch and my dotted line of sight. As I re-examined the situation, I realized the second obstacle was even more important to address. My work tasks more than doubled, and I am not done yet.
It reminded me of hiking as a college kid with a group of younger teens. The bottom sketch gives you an idea of what happened as we came down a mountain (on the left) to cross the upper Tye River (the blue ribbon). We crossed a highway and looked up from the river valley at what we thought was the Priest Mountain, because we could not see beyond the first apparent peak, which I called Fool’s Peak. It was a hard hot climb. Then came a saddle (a small dip in the trail), then another climb past Double Fool’s Peak (another made-up name) to the upper trail to the summit. By the end of the day we had climbed nearly 4000 vertical fleet to get to the summit.
In Genesis 37, Joseph got a vision, but it made his brothers angry. Shortly afterwards, they threw him into a pit. It got worse as he was sold into slavery. Then he was resold to be personal slave to Potipher, whose house became a trap, since Potipher’s wife falsely accused him of sleeping with her. That landed him in jail. It’s easy to read, but the story took years. There was a hint of possible escape as he told two of his jail-mates the meaning of their visions. There was a chance one of them would remember Joseph when released. Two more years went by. The jail-mate, who had survived, had forgotten him. It all started with visions from God. Obedience had seemingly yielded worse than nothing. It turned around, but the impact on his life was never forgotten, as we see later by his own testimony (Genesis 45:4-9). Of course, it was written so we cannot forget.
It’s all true. My stories are true. The Joseph story in Genesis 37-48 is all true. But somewhere, sometimes late in the stories (whether theirs or ours) we get the message. It is the route with God that is important, and it usually takes faith in God, circumstance, and discipline to endure. The cost and the outcome that we might have perceived at the beginning are frequently very different to what we understood at first. I call it ‘The Joseph Factor’.
Obstacles aren’t always what they seem. Something else is going on. If you are a believer and follower of Christ, hold fast by faith.
