“Now a certain man found him, and there he was, wandering in the field. And the man asked him, saying, ‘What are you seeking?’…So it came to pass, when Joseph had come to his brothers, that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the tunic of many colors…Then they took him and cast him into a pit. And the pit was empty; there was no water in it.” Ge 37:15, 23-24.
While Joseph was hanging out with his father at home, his brothers were out in the field feeding their father’s flock of sheep. Joseph, favored by his dad had been given a beautiful tunic that boasted every color known to man. I’ll bet Joseph never took off that tunic except for baths and might have quite possibly even slept in that garment. One thing we know for sure…his brothers hated him for being favored and for dreaming that he would one day reign over them. His dad asked him to go into the field and find his brothers. His brothers had left the original location and had moved to another area. As Joseph was looking for them, he was approached by a ‘man’ asking him what was he searching for. ‘Whether the man is an angel or a human, the unseen hand of the Lord is apparent here.’ K.A. Matthews, Finding God Faithful, Kelly Minter, p. 28. The man directed him right into the hands of his brothers who plotted to kill him. They eventually decided instead of death to ‘buy him a one-way ticket to Egypt through the Ishmaelite traders’ p. 30. Before they did that however they stripped him of the very thing that defined him…his tunic. He approached them as the favored son, but he departed them as a purchased slave.
There are some things in my life that circumstances have stripped away from me. When I was defined as a mother, my confidence was stripped away from me when my daughter was living dangerously on the streets. When I went through a divorce I was stripped of the notion of ‘until death do we part.’ When my dad died, I was stripped of the comfort and joy he gave me while on earth. Even right now, we are stripped of some of the freedoms that have been restricted because of Covid-19. The point is not that our tunic of many colors…those colorful blessings that God has given us…has been stripped from our lives, rather the reality that God is leading us from those blessings into greater blessings. He will use harsh circumstances like Joseph to move us from one area to another to accomplish His great plan for each of us. We can’t hold on tightly to the things that define us because some blessings are only for a season. God is the only One who defines us and will string season upon season together to form a beautiful life for each of us. ‘Is it possible that what appears to be nothing but a tangle of other people’s agendas will somehow be the very ball of yarn God will use to weave one of the most redemptive masterpieces in human history?’ p. 30. The masterpiece of your story and mine.
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