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Joseph Resolves to be True to God, November 8
And Joseph said unto [his brethren], Fear not: ... As for you, ye thought evil
against me: but God meant it unto good ... to save much people alive.
Genesis 50:19, 20
.
Joseph with his captors was on the way to Egypt.... The boy could discern in
the distance the hills among which lay his father’s tents. Bitterly he wept at the
thought of that loving father in his loneliness and affliction. Again the scene at
Dothan came up before him. He saw his angry brothers and felt their fierce glances
bent upon him. The stinging, insulting words that had met his agonized entreaties
were ringing in his ears. With a trembling heart he looked forward to the future.
What a change in situation—from the tenderly cherished son to the despised and
helpless slave! Alone and friendless, what would be his lot in the strange land to
which he was going? For a time, Joseph gave himself up to uncontrolled grief and
terror.
But, in the providence of God, even this experience was to be a blessing to him.
He had learned in a few hours that which years might not otherwise have taught
him. His father, strong and tender as his love had been, had done him wrong by
his partiality and indulgence. This unwise preference had angered his brothers and
provoked them to the cruel deed that had separated him from his home. Its effects
were manifest also in his own character. Faults had been encouraged that were
now to be corrected. He was becoming self-sufficient and exacting. Accustomed
to the tenderness of his father’s care, he felt that he was unprepared to cope with
the difficulties before him....
Then his thoughts turned to his father’s God. In his childhood he had been
taught to love and fear Him. Often in his father’s tent he had listened to the story of
the vision that Jacob saw as he fled from his home an exile and a fugitive. He had
been told of the Lord’s promises to Jacob, and how they had been fulfilled—how,
in the hour of need, the angels of God had come to instruct, comfort, and protect
him. And he had learned of the love of God in providing for men a Redeemer.
Now all these precious lessons came vividly before him. Joseph believed that the
God of his fathers would be his God. He then and there gave himself fully to the
Lord, and he prayed that the Keeper of Israel would be with him in the land of his
exile.
His soul thrilled with the high resolve to prove himself true to God—under all
circumstances to act as became a subject of the King of heaven. He would serve
the Lord with undivided heart.... One day’s experience had been the turning point
in Joseph’s life. Its terrible calamity had transformed him from a petted child to a
man, thoughtful, courageous, and self-possessed.—
Patriarchs and Prophets, 213,
214
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