Grist for the Mill

 Read Genesis 39

It’s not fair!  It’s not fair!

Did you hear me? IT’S NOT FAIR!

Had the story of Joseph taken place in this century,  Joseph might have been shouting, IT’S NOT FAIR! Millions would have been posting, IT’S NOT FAIR!

Surely, the treatment of Joseph by his brothers wasn’t fair. Yes, he was a tattle tale.  Yes, he shared some dreams with his parents and siblings about everyone bowing down to him, but surely that warranted a roughing up not being sold into slavery.

We begin the second leg of Joseph’s journey.  It takes place in Potiphar’s household. Potiphar was the captain of the Royal Guard.  It was surely a top posting.  It came with perks.  Potiphar surely had a good parking spot for his chariot at the Pharoah’s palace.

Potiphar was in a powerful position and he had a good income.  He had enough to purchase a Hebrew slave named Joseph.  We don’t know what he paid, but it was surely a bargain.

Potiphar saw that whatever it was that Joseph was working on or in charge of produced good fruit.  This Joseph character had the touch.  Everything he did produced great results.

One of the wisest decisions that Potiphar made was to put Joseph in charge of everything he had.  Somehow, Potiphar discerned that everything that Joseph did or supervised or influenced in any way was blessed by God.

Potiphar must have thought that he made the deal of the century when he acquired Joseph.  The only drawback was that Joseph was a looker.  He was a chick magnet and Potiphar’s wife noticed him and she wanted him in her bed.

Joseph resisted her invitations repeatedly until one day when there was nobody else around, she invited and he declined but she grabbed his robe.

Joseph ran right out of his robe and Potiphar’s wife cried rape.  When her husband came home, she told her version of the story.  Joseph was a slave and there would be no arraignment, no not guilty plea, no day in court to confront his accuser, and no dream team of lawyers to get him off the hook.  He was a slave.

Joseph was a slave.

Potiphar put Joseph in the Pharoah’s prison.  He surely could have killed Joseph without any consequence but surely Joseph had found favor in Potiphar’s eyes and there was surely some mystery about his success.  He must have some connection with some god.  I doubt that the Potiphar knew the one true God, but he could tell that the force was with Joseph in any case.

So, off to prison it was.

It’s not fair!  It’s not fair!

Did you hear me? IT’S NOT FAIR!

We don’t see Joseph complain. We see the same story retold but this time it is in the Pharoah’s prison.  The Lord was with Joseph in everything that he did and he was successful in all that he did.

The warden saw this and put Joseph in charge of everything in the prison.  The only thing that Joseph couldn’t do was go home.  He was in charge of everything within the prison and he was good at it.

The warden hit paydirt.  What a gift Joseph was to him. Do we understand how much of a blessing Joseph was to his seniors?

In the mid to late 1980’s I was stationed with the First Battalion, Sixth Marines.  I was the company commander for the Headquarters and Service Company, affectionately referred to as the Cats and Dogs.  I had Marines who took care of personnel records—the HR department in the civilian world.   I had cooks, truck drivers and mechanics, scouts, snipers, the intelligence section, the operations section, the supply section, the communication section, and more.

When we deployed for Europe and the Mediterranean, a platoon of tanks, a platoon of engineers reinforced by an AVLB, and some other Marines of assorted specialties were assigned to me. In all, I had 351 Marines and their toys assigned to me.

These Marines had about three dozen different primary missions and all of those collateral missions that are unavoidable.  While I loved commanding this company and loved my Marines, there was never a day without a dozen specialized headaches.

When you are in charge of the cooks, bakers, and candlestick makers as well as the tankers and engineers, the confounding factors increased exponentially. OBTW—these were Marines with loaded weapons who in addition to their specialized job were trained to kill the enemy.

Before I took this assignment, the colonel told me that I could stay as the assistant operations officer or I could command H&S Company. I took the command. It was a no-brainer, but there were days in the middle of the insanity that comes with so many confounding factors that I had to remind myself, I asked for this.

When we returned to the States, I was assigned as the Company Commander of Weapons Company.  Before I left the Headquarters and Service Company, my first sergeant was talking to me and said, “You won’t know what to do with yourself.”

I said, “What?”

He said, “It will all be done for you.”

He was right.  In my new company, I had a first sergeant and a master sergeant—these are senior enlisted.  I had the battalion’s most senior lieutenants and they were assisted by senior noncommissioned officers.

If I wanted something, it was done and done well, but I didn’t really have any day-to-day work. I didn’t need to give any orders.  Everyone knew their job and the job of their seniors and everything was done for me.

I felt as Potiphar must have felt.  I felt as the warden must have felt.  Everything was in good hands.

Just so you know, the battalion did deploy to Central America and I did have a few things to do.  The weapons company had developed an airfield seizure package and it was going to kick off the joint operation.

My company would seize the airfield. Our seaborne and heliborne forces would secure a perimeter around the airfield, and then the Air Force C-5s would start coming in with Army troops and equipment every 90 seconds. That was sort of fun.

It was the usual operation where the intel guys tell you there is no intel only a couple of 20-year-old photos of the airfield to be seized.  “We don’t know anything about this airfield” was the party line.  I think intelligence officers are lazy by nature.

I gave my officers the photos and told them to figure out what they could.  They came back to me within the hour and showed me a place on the runway that I had to look at with a magnifying glass. 

There in bold letters were the words, “See Bees Can Do.”

We had intel on this airstrip.  We had built it.  Somewhere we had all the specs on this facility and now the Intel Officer would have to get out of his do-nothing comfort zone and go find it.

All I had to do was hand the assignment to my officers and they were all over it.

You don’t get those situations too often in life.  Most command assignments have some tougher challenges.  You are short people or they are undertrained.  That creates frustration and more challenges, but when you get a command where everyone is the best of the best, you know just how blessed you are when you get these premier postings.

God had blessed Joseph with success in everything he did and his seniors noticed.  God was with this young man. The Egyptians likely did not know the one true God, but they knew Joseph had some extra help. The force was strong in this one.

Joseph was in prison but it would be a launching pad for his greatest promotion ever.  That story is ahead of us, but for the moment let us consider these thoughts.

At any point along the way, Joseph could have thrown a pity party. He could have cried out, “It’s not fair!” Joseph might have thought that things were not fair, but he didn’t give in and throw a pity party.

He could have thrown in the towel and have just given up.

He had these two dreams but they didn’t come with instructions.  All they had brought him so far was the scorn of his brothers and maybe a little of his parents. They got him sold into slavery and now he was in prison.

Had God sent him a vision of Joseph going to Nashville to write and sing Country and Western music, he had the life experience for a couple of albums already. He might have seen the logic in all of this.

But being sold into slavery didn’t seem to fit his vision.

Rising to the top of Potiphar’s household might have given him some hope, but it only took one woman scorned to see that status taken away.

And now prison, really?

We have the advantage of knowing the whole story but in the moment, it must have been a roller coaster ride of great falls and great successes, one after another. Joseph surely had no idea what was next, but he never lost hope.

He never gave up.  He didn’t cry, “it’s not fair.”  He did his best and the Lord blessed him with success.

Moment-to-moment the best that Joseph could do was stay faithful to God and do his best.  God had big plans for Joseph but Joseph lived moment-to-moment.

Sometimes as we have ups and downs, goals help us get through the day.  I’m going to be an engineer, a football player, own my own business, or be the new drummer for Limp Biscuit.

Sometimes it helps to press on toward the goal.

Whatever it is, sometimes goals are enough to get you through the tough times, but the tough times continue even after you reach your goals.

Sometimes focus helps block out the negative.  We can’t stop the negative stuff in our lives, but we can purposely become myopic and accomplish what we set out to do.

We can hone in on one thing and get it done and done right, but the craziness in the world continues once we have hit our target. The world stands ready to come at us from all angles once again.

You have heard the old saying live one day at a time.  If you ever saw the movie 28 Days, the is one line by Sandra Bullock that hits the target.  Confronting her counselor, she says, “Like 2 or 3 days at a time is an option.”

It’s funny, but it hits home.  How many of us try to live in the past or the future or in something other than the moment.

We all live moment-to-moment. Living 2 or 3 days at a time is not really an option and when we try to live other than in the moment, it’s frustrating.

So, what can we do?  Are we condemned to suffer the emotional ups and downs of the rollercoaster ride that makes up our lives? Must we endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune?  The year is half over and I have to catch up on my Shakespearean analogies.

So, what can we do?  We remain faithful to God.  We trust in the Lord.  We acknowledge that he does have good plans for us, and we live moment-to-moment doing the best that we can.

We should expect the Lord to bless us with success.

We don’t hold a pity party when things bottom out.  We don’t discard our faith when we are riding high. We don’t dwell on the tough times and we don’t lose touch with God in the good times.

As we grow in God’s grace, we learn to accept that:

God is sovereign.

God is good.

God loves us.

God is love.

God has good plans for us.

God has chosen us for his purpose.

God has commissioned us to share the good news of life in Christ Jesus with the world.

We are God’s trusted servants.  Don’t worry, I will preach the Parable of the Talents twice this year. I think that will make it 15 years in a row, maybe 16.  We are God’s trusted servants.

The best thing that we ever did was become a servant—a slave—for the Lord. It’s all about him and because we belong to him, love him, and have been called by him, he takes everything that happens to us and makes it work for the good.

There is a term that many authors use that applies to our Christian faith as well.  That term is Grist for the mill. Everything that happens to an author ends up somewhere in his or her writing.  It may just be an experience that becomes one-tenth of one percent of a character's makeup, but it’s still grist for the mill.

Likewise, for the man or woman who has professed Jesus as Lord and has taken on his yoke, everything that happens to us is just grist for the mill.  It all goes into our story of how we live out God’s plan.

In our lowest moments when things seem hopeless, think, “It’s just grist for the mill.”  Somehow, God will use this experience for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

Don’t forget to praise the Lord when we are riding high.  Live the moment to the full, high or low, and give praise to the Lord and bring glory to his name.

The old catechism question was, “What is the purpose of humankind?” The answer was to bring glory to God and enjoy him very much.

We live moment-to-moment.  Living 2 or 3 days at a time is not an option. We should live in the moment, bring glory to God in every moment, and enjoy God very much in all of our moments regardless of where we are on the rollercoaster ride.

And just so I give the young folks something to Google later on, this ride of life that we are on is a EE ticket.

Live fully in the moment.

Bring glory to God in all of our moments.

Know that God will take all of those moments and use them for good in our lives.

Enjoy the ride.  Enjoy your relationship with God in every moment.

Amen.