Sunday, November 7, 2010

The End of the Story

Consider for a moment Joseph. He was the favorite son of the Patriarch, Israel. At a young age, he was taken from his family by his brothers and sold into slavery. There God prospered him over all of Potiphar's servants. Wrongly accused, Joseph spent the next few years in prison. There God prospered him over all the inmates and he earned the trust of the prison guards. By God's will, Joseph interpreted a dream for two men, one condemned, the other restored. All Joseph asked was that the restored man remember him. He did not and spent a longer time in prison.

Pharaoh's dream brought Joseph to the mind of this restored man and Joseph interpreted the Pharaoh's dream accurately and as a result, he was put in charge of Pharaoh's kingdom. It's a familiar story. And there are more just like it. Not once do we see that Joseph was complaining. Not once do we see that he prayed "Why Me?" In between the high points of Joseph's life came long low points that were not his fault. We can look at his life and celebrate because we have the end of his story. Faithfulness to God = Blessing. We have a total of a few days in a period of several years of this man's life. He had to live through each of those days. He didn't know the end of his story.

When we are going through our hard times, we don't have the end of our story. We don't know what God will work out for us. And we complain, and pray, and sometimes weep. All we know for sure, is that God waits to bless us. When the pain is too great, and we feel we have lost our way in the wilderness, God is there, waiting to give us the end to our story. We can't see it, can't guess what is in store. We just have to have faith based on the evidence of the lives He has worked in before us.

I have a great deal of pain everyday. I have no way of relieving this pain nor do I know how all will end up. I just have to trust that this condition will clear up soon. Even if it doesn't, I still don't know the end of my story. If we were to reduce our entire lives to just a few days of events, would we be trusting God through them or doubting?

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