The Other Joseph

There’s the Joseph in the Christmas story, and he had some crucial dreams, as we saw on Monday. But there’s the other Joseph - the one from the book of Genesis - and he had dreams, too.

In his arrogance, he shared a dream that God had given him about him become a leader in his family. Essentially he taunted his siblings with it, playing up how he was the favorite son of his father (Jacob). Needless to say, this destabilized those relationships - and they already had plenty of family drama going on to start with.

At one point, the siblings try to kill Joseph (but instead send him off to be enslaved in Egypt). As they do so, the story unfolds this way in Genesis 39:

“Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.”

There’s an inherent resistance to dreams. Sometimes it’s because we’re jerks about our dreams. But, as we see time and time in the Bible, it’s also because our dreams make people uncomfortable. Dreaming inherently upsets the status quo, because we’re imagining a better future (and thus critiquing the one we live in now).

Are there dreams in your own heart and mind - perhaps even put there by God - that have encountered resistance in your life? Maybe you are resistant to them yourself, even! Ask God to give you grace to keep pursuing them, and to do so graciously and wisely.