Today's Reading: Genesis 39-40 and Proverbs 7
It would be easy to make the subject of today’s devotional adultery, but that was so yesterday. Still, you got to admit that the contrast is terrific. In one reading, Joseph resists an adultress, and in Proverbs, a man succumbs to one.
Whenever I read the discussion of adultery in Proverbs 7, I always wonder why the writer, who I can only assume to be Solomon, sits and watches this adulterous affair sprout. I mean, where was he watching this from? Did he have a pair of binoculars, and was somehow able to read lips?
No, he probably was close by, which raises the question. Why didn’t he say: “Hey, man, get away from that b___h!” Okay, he probably shouldn’t say the b___h part, but my point is that he could have intervened and possibly saved two marriages that day.
But he didn’t, and we don’t know why. Maybe it was none of his business. Maybe it’s because he was really supposed to.
Sometimes God is the same way. We wait for him to intervene into some evil in our lives, but it just doesn’t happen. I imagine Joseph was probably thinkin’ that when he gets arrested for a sin he didn’t commit, after a perfect record of servitude. That just had to suck.
I imagine that he sat in his cell, feeling despondent, wondering if he did something wrong, and why God hasn’t stepped in and kicked some major butt on those who seriously have it coming.
Perhaps we are missing the point. God isn’t supposed to intervene every time something bad happens to us. In fact, it would actually be more just of the Lord to just let us go our own way and let us get into even more levels of badness.
Joseph soon saw the hand of God when he interpreted the dreams of those prisoners that eventually led to him being freed. (An event that happens in tomorrow’s reading, and was unfortunately delayed.)
It appears that God had a plan to stop the evil of famine that did not eclipse the evil that was happening at the present moment. This is sometimes how God works, standing back and intervening at His time, and not ours.
Yes, it would be nice to have a God who sends twelve legions of angels whenever we whistle, but is it possible that an army like that would totally ruin the story? Perhaps we need to wait until all the chips our down before we ask for a vacuum cleaner. Maybe it is us who need to suck it up and remember who we serve.
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