God has a plan

but it doesn't always make sense.

There’s a story in Genesis that feels a lot like waiting on a cold winter’s morning in a bitter wind. You see your breath, try not to look like a dragon, and clutch your coat tighter, hoping for some sign of movement in the distance. You’ve waited what feels like an eternity for the bus. Then, in the distance, finally, it comes. Not one, but three. No, four! But as they draw closer, your hope turns sour - not a single one is going your way.

That’s the sort of moment Joseph lived through.

“Then Midianite traders passed by. And they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. They took Joseph to Egypt.” (Genesis 37:28)

Like England in the 1966 World Cup final, he must have thought it was over. The pit was dark, the air thick with silence and betrayal. His brothers, flesh and blood, had thrown him in with no more regard than when someone discards a broken light bulb. Then, just as suddenly, unexpectedly, he was pulled out. You can imagine the first breath he took, the sudden rush of light, the elation, the hope rising in his chest... freedom, maybe? Perhaps they had changed their minds, remembered that they were family.

But they hadn’t. The hands that lifted him out were not hands of mercy. They were hands of profit. He wasn’t being rescued. He was being sold.

Twenty shekels of silver. That was the going rate for a slave. That’s what they thought he, their precious brother, was worth.

There’s a cruel kind of whiplash in that moment. Pulled from despair, only to be thrown into deeper captivity. It takes your breath away. It’s the sort of twist that makes you question everything, and perhaps ask the questions you could never imagine asking. If God is present, why this? If He’s powerful, why permit it? It’s the kind of moment that can break a believer - unless, that is, he or she knows something about the purposes of God. Joseph didn’t know the promise we can easily forget: “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

What Joseph didn’t know, and what we often fail to see in our own pain, is that the pit was never the end of the story. Nor was the betrayal. Nor the chains. God was writing something larger than Joseph’s immediate comfort. He was shaping a man who would one day interpret dreams in Pharaoh’s court, feed a starving nation, and say to the very brothers who betrayed him, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” (Genesis 50:20) And the path to doing and accomplishing all these things - these necessary and important things - was that pit.

The gospel that rescued us is not tidy. It rarely comforts us with quick fixes or polished answers. Instead, it calls us to trust in a God who uses pits and prisons and betrayals to forge the kind of character that can carry kingdom purposes. It’s not a quick pull-up on the ramp, make some adjustments, test and go fix. The gospel carries the narrative that this is the God who allowed His own Son to be lifted up - not out of a pit but onto a cross. Sold for silver. Abandoned by friends. Forsaken so that we would never be. Ever. Emmanuel; God with us.

Joseph’s story is a shadow and echoes the shape of redemption for you. Death, then life. Descent, then rising. A dream shattered, only to be fulfilled in a way no one expected. And if we’re honest, many of us are caught in that middle place. We’ve felt the pit. We’ve known the sting of betrayal, of emotional hurt. Maybe we’ve even tasted that brief flicker of hope, only to find it dashed. And yet, the Lord is not absent. He is not indifferent.

Psalm 105 tells us that God “sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, who was sold as a slave” (Psalm 105:17, ESV). Not a random act. Not a divine oversight. God sent him. Sent him in chains. Sent him through the pain. Because purpose often walks through fire before it ever sits in a palace. That’s probably your story?

So if you find yourself pulled from one darkness only to fall into another, do not assume the story’s done. God is not finished with you. The very chains you wear today may be, figuratively, forging the kind of strength that feeds nations tomorrow. And the tears you shed may one day water someone else’s redemption. Don’t underestimate what God is doing in, through and with you.

Keep walking. He is still with you. And the cross reminds us, He knows what it is to be sold... so that we might be free. For freedom Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1).