Fresh Start Devotionals

Forsaken Joseph’s brothers ripped his robe off of him, soiled it with the blood of a goat and threw him into a pit. Joseph didn’t know what would happen to him. In the darkness he sat naked, wet and shivering in the cold. Hungry. Thirsty. Hopeless. Alone. Will his brothers leave him there to die? Will they return to kill him? Will a wild animal get him? What will he do? His fate, it seems is in his brother’s hands. Back home, Jacob holds his son’s garment of favoritism covered with a goat’s blood. Joseph’s brothers have quenched their thirst for revenge and acted on their jealousy. In this moment, Jacob is tormented by the loss of his favorite son. His favorite son sits and waits, not knowing what the future holds. Both men at a crossroads in their lives. Neither knowing that God would later use this very event to further His plan for their lives. What the brothers meant for evil; God would use for good. But now, they are in crisis, unable to see past their grief and fear to even imagine the possibility of a favorable outcome. As bad as it was for Joseph, he didn’t feel forsaken by God. I’m sure that just as God walked with the Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, He kept His promise He made in the Shepherd’s Psalm and sat beside Joseph in the “valley of the shadow …” I’ve never been forsaken. Not by my family; not by my friends, and certainly, not by God. I don’t have a clue what that feels like, and never will. Because He was. Because He was, I will never be. Because He’s promised to be with me always, even to the end of the age. Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).