A different wisdom
Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel,
You who lead Joseph like a flock! Psalm 80:1
Read Genesis 41:32—41
Here is a different wisdom. It does not come from old age and long experience. Joseph is a young man. If I were him I would be happy to forget my recent past. Joseph was in Egypt because he had been anything but wise among his brothers. He had been fat-headed. He had boasted. He had flaunted his father’s favouritism. No, this is not human wisdom. It is the outworking of God’s plan. Joseph is being spoken to by God, used by God for God to work out his purpose for his people. This is way beyond Joseph’s own capacity, the interpretation of the dream. Here is a foolish man whom God uses. When I shift the story around to that perspective, and put it like that, I can see myself now. Let me, at least, pray to be a foolish person that God uses.
Before you were God of Joseph you were God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob. Being their God, you are a God who committed yourself to troubled people. You are a God of people both foolish and scheming, cunning people. You have committed yourself, bound yourself to people who are out of their depth in the ways of God, always trying to construct their lives their way and to follow even God’s way their own way. But you really are committed to these dreadfully human humans. And you worked out your way through them, and they saw it. So you gifted them with wisdom. Now I pray that in all my stumbling I too shall see your purpose revealed, and see it close up because I am caught up in it.