Staring At Vacancy

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

-Genesis 50:20

Even after all the hardship Joseph has experienced in his life, he gives no weight to the evil but instead is focused on the good that God has brought out of the pain. God didn't cause Joseph's brothers to betray him and cast him off, but He did use the situation to show his providence and provision by using Joseph's situation to bring about what He had promised to Israel. God's plan assumes the existence of evil and works within in it. In fact, I won't make a wide sweeping statement, but in this case He depended on it's occurrence in order to carry out His plan.


Lord knows there will always be hardship in life. I may have experienced a bit more this year than usual, but I would be blind and stupid if I thought things would never get harder. I have wasted many months focusing on the pain and injustice of it all. Sure, I caught glimpses of how God was working through it, but I was too focused on the unfortunate situation to give proper admiration to what He was working out in and through me because of (not inspite of) it. 


My prayer today is that I might shift my focus from me to God so that I might have eyes to see the good things that have been there all along. So that I might see the beautiful thing He is making out of the dust instead of the vacant spot on the floor where the dust USED TO lie. For He does not put one thing to death and bring life to another, rather He resurrects and redeems the thing that was put to death. 


image viaAuntieP