Psalm 105:16-17–When he summoned a famine on the land and broke all supply of bread, 17 he had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave.
Being forty years old and living in the town I grew up in, it is sometimes shocking to see people you went to high school with.  Some seem to be “doing well”, and some you don’t recognize because life has been so hard.  But I believe many times we see people we have known, who are in a low place in life at “a bad time”.  So we shouldn’t conclude them to be a failure…
Imagine if people concluded about our life at a time where we were at our lowest point?  The unfairness of being judged at such a time is that life is not over!  That’s like reading a section of an autobiography, and concluding that you know that person’s life story!  The premise that “our life is not over” should humble the person in a “good place” and give hope to the person in a “low place”…
If you met Joseph as a slave, in the pit, or a servant in Potiphar’s house accused of being a rapist, it would be hard not to conclude that this guy’s life is in shambles! Because we only judge from appearances, not from the reality that this man was walking with God!  We judge so much from appearances, that many of us as Christian’s rather replace the image of being in “a good place”, than the appearance of being in a bad one, and actually walking with God!
Joseph was a forerunner, and pioneer for a unique call that only God knew the fruition of, and Joseph trusted God in it.  I would argue that so are you and I!  That we are called to a unique purpose designed by God to do His will…
So at times we may look like we are pathetic outwardly.  But if we are so fixed on our image being more important than our reality, we will resent our reality, because it’s not the image we want to project!  But it could be God “chiseling” you to be a leader and forerunner of His glory and purpose?  Because living a life “that looks” better than someone else’s is not groundbreaking, nor worth living for!
In His Love, L.D.