Joseph and Faithfulness in Waiting

I’ve known and loved Joseph’s story for a long time.

Reading through it again, specifically in Genesis 40 and 41, I saw that Joseph’s story has a lot of ups and downs. Beloved son, thrown in pit; not killed, but sold as a slave; Potipher’s most trusted servant, then accused of trying to sleep with Potipher’s wife; prison, but put in charge; finally becomes assistant to Pharoh. It’s complicated, man.

Yet, it is what happens during those down times that spurs and defines what will happen during the up times. While he’s in prison he interprets from God the dreams of two men. Both men are released from prison, one to be restored to his former position, one to be killed. The one who is restored to his position, who is once again in the favor of the king, forgets what Joseph did for him. He goes back to his regular life, forgetting his companion who is still in prison.

The scripture skips 2 whole years, while Joseph sits in prison. Who knows how he filled his days there. Because we know him, and his character, it’s safe to assume he used the time as best he could. But I was thinking about it, Joseph sitting in a dark and dirty prison, alone with his thoughts, and the occasional other prisoner. For two years he sat, in a foreign land no less, wondering where God was. He must have wondered what he was going to do and why it felt like God was not speaking to him anymore.

Joseph was in a valley, a time of waiting, but he kept trusting that God would at some point act.

I can feel some of the pain that Joseph felt. I’m not trying to be dramatic — I fully realize that I have not been sitting in prison. What I resonate with is the waiting. Whether it’s my wrong mindset or something else, since I graduated college 2 years ago, I have felt like my life was just me waiting for something to happen.

I’m speaking very specifically in regards to my work life, to the possibility of a career. Since graduation, I spent most of a year doing temporary labor work. I dumped boxes of paper onto a conveyor belt. I stacked large plastic containers. I did remodeling work on more than 15 houses. I delivered food. Nothing wrong with any of these. They paid the bills. They were necessary jobs that accomplished things for people. But they were not what I wanted. They had nothing to do with what I studied for. They fulfilled no desire for purpose that I might have felt.

After Joseph had been in prison for a couple years, Pharaoh had a dream that he really needed some analysis and guidance on. Despite the time that had passed and his initially forgetting, the man Joseph had been in prison with, who knew Joseph was gifted in understanding dreams, remembered Joseph. He told Pharaoh about Joseph’s gift, and ultimately using this gift was what got Joseph out of prison.

So the connection here is that while Joseph was at a low point, while he was waiting to see what God would do, he remained faithful to using the gift he had been given.

No one wants to face hard times, but we learn through Joseph that what we do during those hard times can have significant impact on what happens to us later. If Joseph had sulked in prison and ignored the man who needed his dream interpreted, he may have lingered in prison even longer. Neglecting our gifts, and our responsibilities, in times of waiting may keep us from experiencing something great. Pushing into our gifts, fulfilling our responsibilities, may just bring us out of the time of waiting to something better than we had before.