Joseph: A Story of Reconciliation and Emotional HealingExemplo

In Egypt, Joseph is forced into to slavery. Separated from his community, extracted from his home country, and stripped of the favor and honor he once enjoyed, Joseph finds himself in a position to do hard, undignified labor for a foreign people, in a foreign land.

And yet, even in these circumstances, Joseph begins to rise. Under his Egyptian master Potiphar—the captain of the guard—Joseph becomes a trusted administrator over the entire household. When Potiphar’s wife attempts to seduce Joseph, he rejects her advances so she accuses him falsely. As a result, he is thrown into prison. Yet even here, Joseph gains favor with the warden and becomes the administrator over the entire prison.

Imagine being Joseph. In some of the worst circumstances possible, you climb your way up, make progress, find the light again, earn back pieces of your dignity—only to be crushed once again because you chose to do the right thing.

It would make sense to many of us for Joseph to question God at this point, right? Maybe Joseph does question God or go through a time of struggling with God’s plan, but that’s not where the story draws our attention. We only see Joseph persevere. Without any distinction between Potiphar’s house or the prison, he applies his vision, integrity, and steady effort to better the people and places around him. And God continues to bless him wherever he is.

Joseph doesn’t have control over what happens to him. He only has control over how he responds to what happens to him. He could blame God. He could decide to just stop trying, to stop building the properties and profits of a foreign nation and its people who have enslaved him. But Joseph chooses to persevere instead.

Like Joseph, we’ll find strength and hope and better days ahead when we trust God with circumstances we don’t understand and focus on what we can control—our attitudes, our beliefs, our words, our actions—rather than what we can’t control. God has given us this divine gift: that even when the light is stolen from us, we can create it again. We can persevere.

REFLECT

Where do you need the Lord’s help right now to persevere? What are some ways you can reorient your perspective by acknowledging what you can and can’t control? How do you want to respond differently?