This image is a very magnified image of something you see every day. Go ahead and guess what it is. I'll let you know at the end.
Sometimes it's hard for me to recognize the God of the Old Testament. He is stern, He is Just, and frankly, sometimes, He is scary. I'm more accustomed to the God of the New Testament, the Jesus who says 'turn the other cheek.' I was thinking this week about the story of Joseph, son of Jacob, from Genesis 37. He was beloved of his father, and on Father's Day yesterday, I was thinking how that should be a good thing.
Only, for Joseph, it wasn't.
His brothers succumbed to that most basic of human emotions, jealousy. You see, even at an early age, Joseph was a "dreamer." Which is Old Testament speak for someone who had visions from God. God told him he'd be favored and it made his brothers (and even at times his father) angry. The brothers were angry their father loved Joseph, angry God favored Joseph, and instead of trying to be as lovable as Joseph, or instead of loving Joseph themselves, they made some bad decisions. In fact, when Joseph went to bring them food, they decided to kill him.
Let's let that sink in. Younger brother Joseph was taking food to his older brothers who were watching their flocks, so in our terms, they were day traders out there making the family money. Joseph jaunts on down to their office place to take them their favorite order of mushu pork and... BAM, they decide to KILL him. As in, off with his head.
Luckily, good old Reuben had some affection for him, and suggested that they just throw him in a pit instead. He had plans to come back later and save Joseph, but I want to point something out here. Reuben didn't speak up. He didn't stand up to his brothers. Instead, he took the coward's route. He had his heart in the right place, but he didn't do enough. I will come back to this.
In any case, Judah thinks, hey, we could get some cash out of this... let's not be hasty. So they sell poor Joseph for twenty silver pieces and tell their father he died. Their father is devastated, to his credit, but that doesn't help Joseph.
Poor Joseph is in bad shape now. He ends up in the household of a wealthy man, Potiphar. Think how easy it would have been for Joseph to say, "God let my brothers sell me into slavery. God forsook me, so forget Him."
But he doesn't say that.
He keeps the faith. He is still faithful, even after being SOLD AS A SLAVE! And so, with that attitude, he does well enough,he is "blessed" by God to do well there. Unfortunately, he is presumably good looking or young enough to attract the attention of Potiphar's (not virtuous) wife. Notwithstanding his extraordinary attempts to do the right thing, Joseph is then run out of the house by her and caught and slammed into jail for his attempted seduction. (Turns out men in love were delusional even then...) Joseph (again!) did nothing wrong, and got tossed out into an even worse fate. His life has most certainly not been fair. First he was treated badly by his brothers and dad for visions, then thrown in a pit, sold into slavery by the ones who should love him, and finally tossed in jail because he wouldn't betray his God or his master.
What a mess.
Yet, Joseph keeps the faith. He is again put into a position of authority (sort of) within the prison. He comes into contact with two men, a baker and a butler, and he interprets their bizarre dreams correctly, thanks to the power of God. He tells that butler, "think on me when it shall be well with thee", but do you think that butler does? Joseph is proven right, and... still he is betrayed and forgotten. It's not until TWO YEARS LATER (!) that the butler remembers him, because Pharaoh has two dreams and he's asking everyone for help in interpreting them.
You know the rest. Joseph correctly interprets the dreams, and he becomes one of Pharaoh's trusted advisors. In this way, the Egyptians were prepared for the famine, and Joseph's family was brought to beg before him for food. Joseph was in a position to save all of Israel.
Now, God is God. He knew the famine was coming and could have stopped it. He could have stopped Joseph's brothers from doing what they did, and He could have sent an angel to rescue Joseph at any point. What God couldn't do was change the hearts of Jacob's family, so they would listen. He knew that with the way they treated Joseph, they wouldn't listen to him. God let Joseph's brothers exercise their agency, and make horrible decisions, but kept blessing Joseph in the circumstances where he was placed.
What should we take from this? God allows hard things to happen to us for a reason. First, so we can show Him that we will keep the faith. Think of the faith of Joseph, despite all evidence to the contrary!! For YEARS. Secondly, God uses difficulty to shape and sculpt us into the people we are. Third, God uses us to bless others, in this case, Joseph blessed his whole family, and countless others in preventing the starvation that seven years of famine would have caused. In this way, God showed the family and even the Egyptians the benefit of faith.
Similarly, God now wants to use us, to strengthen, to shape us and to bless our families and those around us. In order to qualify, we must remain faithful, even when things are hard. Thank goodness my life hasn't come close to the difficulty level of Joseph!
Now, back to Reuben. That poor guy had the right idea, but his follow through was sadly lacking. He didn't get to the pit soon enough, and when he went back, Joseph was already gone. He rent his coat, he was so upset, but it was too late. He should have stood up to his brothers for Joseph at the outset. He also didn't follow the slave traders to try and track Joseph down.
There is another "dreamer" we Mormons read about in the Book of Mormon. His name is Lehi. He got this one vision from God in which Lehi was following a rod of iron to get to a tree where he could eat some fruit that was essentially the love of God. I was reading about his dream last night in 1 Nephi 8:33. Lehi talks about the distractions in place to try and sidetrack people from making it to the tree. There's a river of dirty water, there are mists of darkness, and there's a "great and spacious building" that's full of people who had already fallen away.
In verse 33-34, he says:
And great was the multitude that did enter into that strange building. And after they did enter into that building, they did point the finger of scorn at me and those that were partaking of the fruit also; but we heeded them not.
These are the words of my father: For as many as heeded them, had fallen away.
Let me repeat that in today's vernacular. Everyone who paid attention to the ridicule of the world left the church, left God, and fell away. Not some. Not a lot. Everyone.
Reuben listened to the scorn of his brothers and he let his sibling be sold into slavery. He succumbed to peer pressure and made a grievous, life altering, mistake. Tearing his coat up later didn't make up for his poor decision. Nothing could.
That photo from the beginning (taken from https://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/02/02/21-fascinating-images-that-make-simple-things-profound/) is a picture of salt and pepper, magnified a lot. Looks like wood chips and marshmallows! I bet you see that every day, but not as close as in that photo. God is, like us, with the salt and pepper. He is able to step back and see the whole image. Our lives, in the vast tapestry of the world, are like that image. We can't see how it fits in with anything else, but God can. It makes Him uniquely able to guide our lives. He has a plan for each of us, for you, for me, if we will have faith in Him.
We live in a time that is full of scoffing, full of scorn. I like social media a lot... but it's full of scoffing people. It's full of people who mock my faith in God, my belief in a Redeemer, in Jesus Christ. These people make fun of me for believing in something I can't see, and sometimes they go beyond making jokes and are downright accusatory, rude, or threatening even.
Do not heed the scoffers, or you will fall away. You will be like Reuben. You will regret it, eventually.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is about love, about kindness, about doing good to all men. Do not let the behavior or words of others turn you into Reuben. Stand firm. Be as Joseph was, and let God work through you. It won't be easy. It won't happen in minutes or days, or sometimes even in years, but if you have faith and are patient, you will see God use you to accomplish something beautiful, something transcendent, something you can't even imagine, just as Joseph could not have envisioned the good he would do. God will turn you into his instrument if you will but withstand the scoffs and scorn of the world.
