It's Not Fair!

"So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt."  Genesis 37:28

"Meanwhile, the Midianites sold Joseph in Egypt to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh's officials, the captain of the guard."  Genesis 37:36

Life is not fair.  It never has been.  We are not all born on equal footing.  Some people seem to get one bum rap after another while others receive advantage after advantage.  It is difficult to deal emotionally with unfair treatment.  Joseph might well be the poster boy for how to deal with one set of unfair circumstances after another.  If ever anybody made lemonade with the lemons life handed him, it was Joseph.

Joseph's daddy sent Joseph to check on his brothers who had gone to Shechem to find good grazing for their sheep.  When Joseph's brothers saw him approaching, they decided to kill him.  Genesis 37:19-20 says,  "'Here comes that dreamer,' they said to each other.  'Come now, let's kill him and throw him into one of those cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him.  Then we'll see what comes of his dreams.'"  Reuben persuaded the others not to kill Joseph but to throw him into the cistern alive.  Reuben planned to rescue Joseph later and take him back home.

While the brothers were eating lunch, a caravan of Ishmaelites came by on their way to Egypt.  This caravan didn't just happen along by coincidence.  In hindsight we can see that it was an integral part of God's plan for Joseph and the Israelites, but at the time it must have seemed like an instrument for unfair treatment to Joseph.  Joseph's brothers sold him to the Ishmaelites, who took the seventeen year old boy to Egypt, a foreign country with a different language and unfamiliar customs.  This lad, who was the beloved of his father, was sold as a slave.

How do you think you would feel if you had brothers who hated you enough to plan to kill you?  How do you imagine you would react if you were unjustly taken from your family and all that was familiar and dear to you and became a slave in a foreign land?  How do you usually react when you are treated unfairly?  Do you know how Joseph reacted?

Father, life is not fair, but You are just.  We can trust You despite any circumstances in which we may find ourselves.  May our faith in You and in Your plans for our lives remain strong and steadfast.  Amen.