Suffering takes the wind out of you. It clouds your view of what’s true and what’s imagined. It leaves you in the dark, feeling your way forward in search of light.
Suffering has a way of making you feel like God has left you. Your head speaks a better word, but your heart can’t comprehend it. Your eyes see the carnage of the trial, even though your faith tells you this can’t mean he doesn’t care.
Where is God in these moments? How do you find him?
Let’s be honest. Sometimes you can’t. Right there, in that moment, you can’t see how God is working. Right there, in that moment, you can’t rely on proofs. They simply aren’t visible to the eye—or heart.
This is where Genesis 39 comes in.
Remember the story? Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery. While there, he is attacked by a woman who falsely accuses him of rape. He sits alone in a jail cell only to be forgotten by the man he helped find freedom. He’s left to find his way in a foreign country—no family to be found. Three times Moses tells us “God was with Joseph.” You know who doesn’t say that in that text? Joseph. He’s faithful, for sure. But he’s not singing a hopeful tune. He’s not saying “despite all of this, I believe God is for me.” His actions tell us he’s not left his faith. His actions tell us he believes God still work—otherwise he wouldn’t tell the cupbearer and baker that God interprets dreams (Gen. 40:8). But we’re not told anything about how he feels in the moment. Moses just writes what he knows. He relays the details of what Joseph experienced and then reminds us that God was with him. Joseph held fast. God didn’t leave him. Joseph kept suffering. God was by his side. The narrator knows the end result, Joseph does not.
It’s almost like Moses inserts these lines throughout Genesis 39, and other parts of Joseph’s story, for us. Without it we could wonder “does God care for him?” Without the reminder that God was with him, we’re left in the dark about where he stands with God.
But we aren’t left in the dark. Joseph is betrayed by his brothers, but God is with him. Joseph is wrongly accused and attacked, by God is with him. Joseph is in prison, but God is with him. Joseph is away from his family in a foreign land, but God is with him. None of those circumstances look or feel like God is by his side, but that’s how God works. That’s why we need these little insertions in the text. We’re as tempted to doubt that God cares in Joseph’s story as we are in our own. We walk by sight and not by faith.
So what about us? We don’t have those little insertions in our own lives when we only see trials and pain. We don’t have a narrator like Moses, writing the story of our lives for all to read. But don’t we? We have promise upon promise that God is still with us—just like he was with Joseph.
“I will never leave you or forsake you.” (Heb. 13:5)
“Even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he’s with us.” (Ps. 23)
“I’m with you always.” (Matt. 28:20)
“God works all things for good.” (Rom. 8:28)
Our suffering displays the works of God. (John 9:3)
Our weakness leads us to not trust in ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. (2 Cor. 1:9)
Suffering produces endurance. (Rom. 5:3-5)
When trials come, we have these promises to insert into the darkness. When you can’t make sense of it, remember “But the Lord was with you. The Lord is with you.” Nothing in Joseph’s story screamed: “God is in this.” At least not in the moment. It was only after years, decades even, that he saw how the insertion by Moses—“but the Lord was with Joseph”—made sense. What he couldn’t see in the darkness was made plain in the light—God’s presence plays the long game. His presence doesn’t mean it moves as fast as we want, but it does mean he always finishes what he starts. And for those who are his, what he starts in sorrow he will one day complete in shouts of joy (Ps. 126:5).