Then all his sons and all his daughters [Israel’s children] arose to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. And he said, “Surely I will go down to Sheol in mourning for my son.” So his father wept for him [Joseph]. Meanwhile, the Midianites sold him [Joseph] in Egypt to Potiphar, Pharaoh’s officer, the captain of the bodyguard. ~Genesis 37:35-36
God’s doing something. He’s always doing something. He’s always weaving a story, redeeming His people, and rearranging the pieces to take care of us in ways we don’t ever see in the moment.
God was doing something here. We have the luxury of seeing the whole picture, but at this point, Israel did not.
Joseph had a God-given dream that one day his brothers would bow down to him. And they did several years later, but Joseph as a teenager lacked any sense of tack as he presented this information to his siblings. Instead, he bragged about it. His brothers were mad.
Judah took the lead on selling their brother into slavery. I’ve heard it said that this is the first recorded instance of human trafficking: the selling of another person for a financial profit. The brothers lied about it to their father, putting the blood of a goat on Joseph’s garment and presenting it to Israel (who the Bible calls Jacob again at this point – he seems to slip back into his former name when life gets hard).
So here we are, Israel thinks his beloved son is dead, and the Midianites, whom Judah sold him to, now transfer him to Potiphar.
We have the luxury of knowing how the story ends. God redeems every story. I don’t like going through hard times any more than anyone else, but with God, there is always hope. God is our strength, our healer, our comfort. Hope may not come in the way we expect, but we know God is there in the midst of the mess.
In this case in Genesis, God was moving His people to Egypt. He already knew that a famine was coming and He knew He wanted one of His people to lead the relief efforts. How awful would that famine have been for the Hebrew people if they had had to rely solely on the mercy of Pharaoh? God needed Joseph to be there, and this painful situation is how He got him there. That doesn’t make it okay for Judah and the other brothers to have sinned like this, but God redeemed the situation in miraculous ways.
He does the same for us. As we find ourselves in hard situations, just know that God is always working. It may not be in ways that we like or are even aware of, but He is there. Always.