When Dreams are Dashed (47)
Robert Dawson
Genesis 37
I read a story this week about a 15-year Bangladesh boy named Fahim who hid inside a shipping container and fell asleep while playing hide-and-seek with friends. Not good. It gets worse. Somehow, he got locked in the container. Not good. It gets worse. The container was then loaded and shipped to Malaysia, 2,300 miles away. Miraculously, though severely dehydrated, feverish, hungry, and confused, Fahim survived the 6-day ordeal, was treated repatriated back home to Bangladesh.
Talk about an unexpected journey. It was not what young Fahim had in mind when he rolled out of bed that morning and decided to play a simple game of hide-and-seek with his friends. Not only was that not something he had in mind but was probably not even a scenario that would have even crossed his mind in his wildest dreams.
Today, we begin what for one young man, Joseph, would become an unexpected journey. And for a young man known as a dreamer, he would not have dreamed this up in his wildest dreams. Our story comes from Genesis 37 and is the story of Jacob's descendants, a story where Joseph, in terms of ink, receives most of the attention.
Joseph was not Jacob's oldest son but was the oldest son of his favorite wife Rachel. Joseph was also Jacob's favorite son because as we are told in verse 3 Joseph, (NASB), "was the son of his old age; and he made him a varicolored tunic." I think the NIV is more accurate when it says that it was an ornate robe. The CSB says a long-sleeved robe.
I am not trying to destroy all the Sunday School lessons we had as children but just thinking it was a fun multicolored robe given to Joseph by his father that fueled his brother's jealousy misses an important point, one I did not know until I started studying Joseph's life for the first time. I have read it many times, heard it many more, but this is the first time I have stopped to dig deeper into Joseph's story.
The only other time we f ...
Robert Dawson
Genesis 37
I read a story this week about a 15-year Bangladesh boy named Fahim who hid inside a shipping container and fell asleep while playing hide-and-seek with friends. Not good. It gets worse. Somehow, he got locked in the container. Not good. It gets worse. The container was then loaded and shipped to Malaysia, 2,300 miles away. Miraculously, though severely dehydrated, feverish, hungry, and confused, Fahim survived the 6-day ordeal, was treated repatriated back home to Bangladesh.
Talk about an unexpected journey. It was not what young Fahim had in mind when he rolled out of bed that morning and decided to play a simple game of hide-and-seek with his friends. Not only was that not something he had in mind but was probably not even a scenario that would have even crossed his mind in his wildest dreams.
Today, we begin what for one young man, Joseph, would become an unexpected journey. And for a young man known as a dreamer, he would not have dreamed this up in his wildest dreams. Our story comes from Genesis 37 and is the story of Jacob's descendants, a story where Joseph, in terms of ink, receives most of the attention.
Joseph was not Jacob's oldest son but was the oldest son of his favorite wife Rachel. Joseph was also Jacob's favorite son because as we are told in verse 3 Joseph, (NASB), "was the son of his old age; and he made him a varicolored tunic." I think the NIV is more accurate when it says that it was an ornate robe. The CSB says a long-sleeved robe.
I am not trying to destroy all the Sunday School lessons we had as children but just thinking it was a fun multicolored robe given to Joseph by his father that fueled his brother's jealousy misses an important point, one I did not know until I started studying Joseph's life for the first time. I have read it many times, heard it many more, but this is the first time I have stopped to dig deeper into Joseph's story.
The only other time we f ...
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