Genesis 50:20- “What you meant for evil, God meant for good, to bring about that many people would be saved as they are today”. I love this verse. It was a little over a decade ago now when I started the week studying the end of Genesis for a series I was preaching that traced the life of Joseph, and by the end of the week, this verse nearly saved my life.
This verse, spoken from Joseph recounts the evils he had to endure as a result of the evil plot against him from his brothers. Their father has died, and the brothers come to Joseph sure that now that dad isn’t watching, now he will have his revenge. But Joseph knew the full picture. He saw how God used this tragedy to preserve his entire family in Egypt. He didn’t hold grudges, but surely he walked with a limp knowing that his attempt at serving justice would fail miserably compared to Gods perfect plan.
In that one life-changing week in 2010, I found out that I would be mistreated in a way that would cause me to forever walk with a limp. The details don’t get the glory in this story, just the Lord’s goodness. As soon as I found out what was happening, and the fog of shock wore off, my wife Valerie and I hugged, cried and prayed—in that order. I remembered a calm that the Lord gave me to take this passage I had studied and that I had planned to preach in a few short hours, and directly apply it to my now. We put faith forward and clung to the God who is surprised by nothing and holds all things—even this, in his massive, loving hands. Although we didn’t know the answers to “why” this was happening, we simply trusted God’s great goodness and we remained faithful. But faithful to what? Well, faithful to Him, faithful to each other, and faithful to a reliance on a bigger plan—a 20-years-later-preserved-in-Egypt sort of later. And God did what He always does. He worked.
Both before 2010 and since 2010 my family and I, as well as my church family have encountered countless “issues”, “mishaps” and “mistreatments”, but there was something that happened to me and in my marriage on this early summer day, that would forever cause me to anticipate watching the Lord work—even if it is in the midst of a catastrophic storm.
Pastor Ed Boness