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miss the point or waste the potential. But
inexorably, through it all, God is seeking to
move us forward on the path towards our final
salvation. Take Joseph as an example. As a
teenager, he had dreams from God, that one
day his brothers would bow to him. They
unreasonably hated him, and at 17 years old
faked his death and sold him into slavery in
Egypt. There, again, he was falsely accused
and imprisoned. Whilst there, he offered to
interpret the dreams of two men, confident
that God’s dreams would come true. And they
did. As a result of that, Pharaoh called for him
to interpret his dreams and again, Joseph
believed that dreams given by God come true.
As a result, he was promoted from prison to
be prince of Egypt. And about 10 years later,
his brothers came bowing to him, begging for
food during the famine. His dreams were
fulfilled. But for decades of hard experience
up until then, Joseph lived in a situation
where it seemed those dreams could never
come true for him. He saw the dreams of
others coming true; but his never did. But still
he held on to his basic faith that they would.
And that faith was rewarded. He summed up
the situation in Gen. 50:20: “You meant it for
evil, but God meant it for good… to save many
people alive”. Through the long-drawn out
process of unfair suffering, God
worked. Ultimately, to save
people. Looking at his life at any
one point during those earlier
years, all the questions of why
the innocent suffer, the wicked
prosper… would have remained
apparently unanswered. But the
lesson is that God’s saving
purpose will eventually come
true for us- if we remain within
that purpose in faith / trust. And it is through
the decades of unanswered questions that it
all works out in the wonderful way it does. In
Joseph’s case, he must have wondered about
one stubborn detail in his first dream which
didn’t, apparently, come true. It was that his
mother along with his father and brothers
would bow down to him. He was taught
through his sufferings in prison and in the
trauma of the famine that God’s dreams do
come true. And his brothers did bow to him as
predicted. But… his mother? She was dead
when God gave him that first prophetic dream
as a teenager. And so she never bowed to him
when his brothers did. And yet he believed
that God’s dreams come true; he had been
taught to believe this by experience. So he
would have been driven to the same hope and
resolution that we are- that at the last day,
God’s people will be resurrected and all that
has been promised us shall come gloriously
true. In God’s own time and way which we
may not understand.
Through all his sufferings and unanswered
questions and struggles about suffering and
God’s rightness in allowing it all… Job was
driven to a firm hope in the resurrection of the
dead and final, ultimate justice being done
when he would see God face to face. This
would be when “at the last day he will stand
upon the earth”, in the second coming of
Christ (Job 19:25-27). This is the final key
which shall turn the stiff lock created by all
our struggles about suffering. Then we shall
understand and see things perfectly; “for now
we see in a glass, darkly; but then, face to
face” (1 Cor. 13:12). After all, we are only
human. No more, but no less. Our insistence
that we must, right now, this moment, under-
stand completely… shall then be seen for the
petulance of a child, who doesn’t have the
apparatus to understand the
answers even if they are given.
Now that, of course, is
humbling; for we wish to see
ourselves as mature and capable
of understanding. ‘No! Tell me,
I know I can ‘get it’, I’m old
enough to know, and I will
understand if you tell me’. This
is effectively what many of our
struggles amount to. But a
child’s struggles and frustrations at not being
able to understand are real enough, and we
would never seek to mock them nor say that
they are not legitimate. They are legitimate
and real enough… and painful enough. So in
saying that the full mystery has not yet been
revealed (for we see through a glass, darkly),
I am in no way brushing off the legitimacy of
our pain and struggles over these matters. But
“through a glass, darkly” we do see an outline
form of understanding. Even if it emerges
from the glaze of years of our own tears and
head shaking.
“Yahweh reigns! He is
clothed with majesty!
Yahweh is armed with
strength. The world
also is established to
stand firm, so that it
can’t be moved.
Psalm 93:1