Seeing God in the suffering
It’s pretty easy to feel compassion for Joseph. Despite a seeming lack of emotional intelligence (telling his brothers about his prophetic dreams of ruling over them), being sold into slavery by those brothers into an unfamiliar culture, away from everything he knew and loved, seems incredibly unkind.
God absolutely redeemed Joseph’s experiences—using them to preserve His people through a severe famine. But it’s a difficult story to watch unfold on the pages of Scripture. Betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery. Framed for sexual assault and imprisoned. Helped fellow prisoners only to be forgotten by one of them for two additional years.
Once finally released, his life begins to change direction. Joseph was elevated to an incredibly high position of authority—second only to Pharoah. He ultimately married and had children.
Reading the account of his life, we naturally feel the pain of Joseph’s hardships—and might even feel righteous anger on his behalf. But Joseph didn’t languish in his own pain.
The names he gave to his children reveal that truth:
- Joseph chose the name of his first son, Manasseh, because God “had allowed him to forget all [his] trouble and all [his] father’s household” (Genesis 41:51). This doesn’t mean he’d literally forgotten them (otherwise he couldn’t make such a comment). What he’s articulating is that he’s forgotten (forgiven) the unkindness they’d shown him.
- Joseph chose the name of his second son, Ephraim, because God “made [him] fruitful in the land of [his] suffering” (v. 52). He acknowledges the pain of his journey yet recognizes God’s providence as outweighing it.
Joseph must have somehow seen God at work in his sufferings to be able to respond with such grace and faith.
We experience wrongdoing at the hands of people in this life.
It is unjust.
I won’t minimize it or gloss over it with a Christian platitude.
But I, for one, want to emulate Joseph’s example in moving through those sufferings. The Bible doesn’t record for us how he came to a place of healing. I cannot fathom it was easy. Or fast. but I’m confident God had a hand in it.
Though we don’t have Joseph’s blueprint to follow, what we can extract from the biblical record is the need to look for what God did do or is doing in the midst of those seasons. What usually sits front and center in our vision is what He didn’t do—what we wish He’d done. Most often, we wish that He’d prevented that pain altogether. And when we know Him to be sovereign, it’s difficult to grapple with the idea that He could have prevented it but didn’t.
I can’t profess to understand why He’s allowed the pains that have occurred in my life—or yours. And there’s no value in comparing them. The Bible teaches us that suffering produces good and I lean on that truth. Yet that truth is often eclipsed from our vision by the desire to avoid suffering.
I wonder if the reason Joseph could say what He said—could see what He saw in terms of God’s gifts in the midst of pain—is because he focused on what God did do, not what He didn’t.
I think we can take a cue from the art world to build our faith in this way. Allow me to introduce you to negative space. Essentially, negative spaces are the areas between and around an object (the object itself comprises positive space). They negative spaces appear empty but are sharing edges with the positive spaces and define the boundaries. The most famous example of this is known as Rubin’s vase, depicted in the image above. In it, we can see the vases (positive space) and then, after looking closer, we see silhouettes of faces. The negative space is what reveals the silhouettes… revealing what couldn’t at first be seen.
We have to look at the image differently to see them.
Might the same be true of our circumstances? When God at first seems absent, might He actually be present? Is His handiwork evident in the negative spaces?
Let’s look, friends. Let’s look.
For some fun examples of negative space, check these out.