Being a True “Joseph”

There is an amazing story in the Old Testament about a Jewish boy who was sold by his brothers to some slave traders somewhere between Canaan and Egypt. The boy had ten brothers who were older than him and a younger brother called Benjamin.

This boy’s name was Joseph which I am told means “Jehovah will give you a lot of blessings". His father Jacob, later named Israel, was the son of Abraham who had migrated from a place called Ur of the Chaldeans in modern day Iraq and was looking for a suitable place to settle in the promised land called Canaan.

The story of Joseph was accidentally brought back to me as I was spending the Christmas of 2018 with my clan in the Eburu hills west of Lake Naivasha. In a quiet moment by myself, I picked a Bible and, fortuitously, it opened on the story of Joseph. I started reading it and soon realized that the child- hood rendition I knew was limited. So I decided to read it slowly and carefully.

And that is when I realized how little of the story I actually knew.

Joseph’s Story

On serious reflection, Joseph’s story is one of the Bible fables that is extremely well told. The story is one of overcoming adversity, creating a home and living a promise where these were in short supply, testing your allies and family to the extreme and deciding what matters in the final analysis.

After Joseph was sold to the slave traders going to Egypt, he ended up as a worker in the Pharaoh’s palace (is that the basis of the name St. Joseph the Worker?). As a well-educated and trained son, it did not take him long to be identified as a dependable household worker. He rose among the ranks to become a trusted confidante in the palace. But, his moment of glory came when the Pharaoh had an awful dream one night and no one could interpret it. Until they asked Joseph his views on the dream.

The rest is history because he was able to tell, through some divine intervention, about the seven years of plenty followed by seven years of severe famine. By a stroke of pure military genius, the Pharaoh had put him in charge of the kingdom’s administration at the relatively young age of 30. And he did what many consultants fail to do: Give a systematic program for preparing for the anticipated famine seven years down the line. A very risky approach but with a major potential payoff: if he was right, tragedy would be avoided; if not, nothing would be lost anyway.

As luck would have it, the famine came and this is where he even became a saviour of his own people. His brothers came to look for grain which could only be found in Egypt. This is the tail-end of the story: When they came, he was able to recognize them but they did not as they might have assumed that he was long dead.

The process by which he finally revealed to them who he was is well known to avid Bible readers so I will not get into the details.

LESSONS

But what are the lessons to be drawn from this beautiful biblical anecdote?

Lesson 1

Just because you have been sent into exile or into adversity, do not assume that you are finished. If you believe strongly in what you have or what you know, then you may be given a chance to redeem yourself and even those who sent you into adversity.

When your creator closes one door, he may have opened an- other one to greater opportunity than you ever imagined - just like Joseph. The road to that door will not necessarily be easy - just like Joseph’s trials and temptations even with the wife of the boss. But you must have the strength of character to know what is right or wrong.

Lesson 2

If you are going to be a redeemer, do not for once think it is just for your own people whoever you conceive them to be. If Joseph had made policies that were going to end up helping his own people, chances are he would have failed. But because he did things which were intrinsically right, he ended up benefitting even them in their hour of need.

Lesson 3

You need to have a clear vision of what would happen to your people in case something happened to you. In the case of Joseph, he later invited them to come and live with him in Egypt, a fatal mistake which led to their eventual enslavement after Joseph was dead.

Even that was not terminal as it opened another door in the form of Moses who was to eventually take them back to Canaan, their promised land. The lessons they learned in Egypt probably enabled them to conquer their enemies, something they might not have done had they stayed in Canaan.

Lesson 4

Remember that, in life, nothing is ever really final. As you move on, new challenges come along and you have to be prepared to look for new solutions because the old answers may no longer work.

Change requires new approaches if you are to succeed.

This story reassured me that selecting my baptismal name of Joseph may not have been so bad. I only hope that I will not leave my people as slaves in their Egypt.

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