Joseph; Profiles of Obscurity
"When they saw him from a distance and before he came close to them, they plotted against him to put him to death. And they said to one another, 'Here comes this dreamer! Now then, come and let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; and we will say, 'A wild beast devoured him.' Then let us see what will become of his dreams!'"
It's 5:52 Tuesday morning. Yesterday was an exceptionally difficult day at work. Simply put, my department has been asked to achieve impossible goals yet we are not provided the resources needed to make those goals. Out of mental exhaustion I slept away the evening and really had no interest in getting out of the bed this morning to face another day. I'm also feeling the effects of emotional exhaustion as I've been thinking a lot lately about being so far removed from everyone I love and care about. I'm 4 hours away from our church home and dear friends in Columbus. And I'm 10 hours away from our families and our good friends from the church we planted. Most days I feel very much alone and find myself dealing with the reality over and over again that leaving Illinois was a mistake.
I wonder if what I'm feeling is anywhere near what Joseph felt after being violently torn away from familiar sights and sounds, voices and touch of his home and family and sent to a far-away land in captivity to foreigners who cared no more for him than you would care for a work-animal or a piece of machinery.
Joseph was a man of dreams. As a young boy he was given dreams by God and those dreams gave him a sense of purpose and destiny. I don't think Joseph is unusual in this sense. I believe that any of us - if we will listen closely enough - will hear God whisper dreams into our hearts for He knows the plans He has for us and if we will seek him with all of our hearts he will show us those plans. But, there are a lot of people, circumstances, and events in life that seek to kill our dreams. The first people who attempted to kill Joseph's dreams were his own family. I think this is common as well.
The people we are closest to are typically the first ones to hear our dreams. And though it isn't usually out of malicious intent, they are typically the first ones to strike a blow against those dreams. Because they love us and want what THEY think is best for us, they are usually the first ones to try to convince us that our dreams are the wrong dreams, or even that our dreams are just plain silly. I have found that the most discouraging words spoken against the pursuit of our dreams are often spoken by our own flesh and blood. Sometimes the attack on our dreams doesn't even involve words. The silence can inflict as much damage as the spoken word.
Joseph was forced into obscurity from his family as a result of his dreams; thrown into a pit, and then sold to a caravan of slave-traders to be taken to Egypt to live out the rest of his life. Our dreams today will often separate us from our families in the same way. Why is this obscurity a necessary part of the story? I belive that if the dreams are truly whispered to us by God and He is the one inviting us into those dreams, intentional obscurity will serve the very important purpose of allowing us to be alone with those dreams, away from the voices, the challenges, the oppostion, the ridicule so that we can test the dreams and discover with certainty that they are indeed God's dreams for our lives.