Psalm 105:16-17

Psalm 105:16-17

Joseph in slavery

We humans have no clue, most of the time, about what is really happening around us! As Psalm 104 was eager to show us, God is active in all creation, the creatures of the world serve Him and glorify Him, the praise being offered is continuous. Even inanimate objects and geological structures act according to the will of God. It is, therefore, no surprise to learn that when famine comes it is God who sends it! In these verses the famine is, of course, the one that overtook the Egyptians and brought hardship on them and also upon their neighbours. Seven predicted years of plenty were followed by seven years of deprivation, exactly as God foretold. The man at the centre of these events was Joseph, the son of Jacob, sold as a slave by his brothers. Joseph must have questioned his fate many times, especially when everything seemed to be working against him, little did he know that the Lord God had a master plan and that he was pivotal in bringing this to fruition. It was a complicated plan, it involved many individuals and it relied on precise timings and events, and it would never work unless Joseph remained true to His God and obeyed all that he was commanded.

The ways of the Lord do not change, events happen around us that are dismissed as coincidences or simply beyond our control, but as they unfold the Lord is working out His plans. We need to be alert, we too may be pivotal to the fulfilment of God’s will, we may be the cog in the machine that causes everything else to fit into place and start working. Joseph’s brothers did not have a clue what they were doing when they sold the brother they hated into slavery, but God knew, God had approved the plan, what appeared to be a disaster was actually going to turn into a triumph. Hallelujah! 

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