David Jeremiah posed an interesting question today on his radio program. He told of an old tradition to the effect that as Joseph was being taken as slave to Egypt, he found and opportunity to escape, but as he tried to slip out of the camp, a dog barked, awakening the guard who recaptured him. Edward Everett Hale, who wrote "A Man Without a Country," asked the question, "What if the dog hadn't barked?" In his short, imaginative story, the dog didn't bark, the guard slept on, Joseph did escape, and made his way back to his father. The seven plentiful years came, followed by seven years of famine, but there was no Joseph in Egypt to save his people. Starvation wiped out his family...and the lineage of our Savior.
At the end of the actual Biblical story, Joseph tells his brothers, "You meant this for evil, but God meant it for good," but it took thirty years for that good to surface. In the meantime, Joseph endured nearly fifteen years' imprisonment, and for thirty years his father grieved daily the son he believed dead.
Sometimes it takes a long time to be able to see the good that God plans to bring out of the negative experiences and tragedies that so often dog our steps. In the meantime, evil remains evil; it isn't somehow magically transformed into something other than what it is. It is destructive and hurtful. As in Joseph's story, it divides families, destroys trust, unjustly imprisons people both literally and figuratively. No amount of whitewashing or explaining can make evil good. Our problem is that like Joseph, we spend a great deal of time in the "in between," suffering through the evil, unable to see beyond that which tears at our hearts. We wish the dog to stay silent so we can escape that which we wish to avoid. We seldom consider what might be lost were we to get our wish, because we have no way of knowing that a famine is on its way. But all the time we weep over our misfortune and loss, God is looking down the road with purposes that will take that evil and force it into a pattern of his own making.
St. Paul enjoined us to give thanks for all things. I haven't gotten there yet. I am learning to give thanks IN all circumstances, but I don't know how to be thankful for the evil and misfortune that is so destructive in people's lives. I'm not sure what to do about those words of St. Paul, but it helps to know that our misfortunes aren't mere happenstance, capricious and meaningless, but must ultimately bow before the plan of our loving heavenly Father.
No comments:
Post a Comment