Genesis 37:36

And the Midianites sold him into Egypt unto Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh’s, and captain of the guard.

Joseph is now in Egypt.

Sold.
Removed from home.
Placed in a foreign land.
And yet the story is not over.

Not even close.

Following the break in chapter 38, Joseph’s story will continue, and as it does, his life will go on illustrating the life of Jesus in one scene after another. That is one of the beautiful things about Joseph. The Spirit keeps using his life to turn our eyes toward Christ. Joseph is not the point in the final sense. Jesus is.

And that is true for us as well.

The Father says to us, “You exist to cause people to appreciate My Son, to focus on My Son, to give pleasure to My Son. Therefore, I want you to know Him and to make Him known.”

That is a high calling.

We get so easily tangled up with ourselves. Our plans. Our troubles. Our name. Our success. Our comfort. But the real purpose of our lives is higher than that. We are here for His Son. We are here that people might see something of Jesus in the way we live, in the way we endure, in the way we speak, in the way we love, and in the way we trust God when life takes us into places we would never have chosen for ourselves.

Joseph did not choose Egypt.

But even in Egypt, he would become a picture of Christ.

That encourages me, because it means the strange places are not wasted places. The hard places are not empty places. The places where you feel removed, misunderstood, overlooked, or pressed down may be the very places where the likeness of Jesus is being formed most clearly in your life.

That is what the Father is after.

Not simply that we would survive.
Not simply that we would get through.
But that we would be Joseph like in this sense, that our lives would point beyond us to Someone greater.

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:2 that we are living epistles.

That means people are reading our lives.

They are watching how we walk through loss.
They are watching how we respond to injustice.
They are watching whether we panic, whether we grow bitter, whether we compromise, or whether there is something steady in us that they cannot explain.

And what ought they see?

They ought to see Christ.

Not perfection in us.
Not greatness in us.
But something of His beauty, His steadiness, His meekness, His purity, His forgiveness, His confidence in the Father.

May our lives be Joseph like.

May they be pictures of Christ.

May people come away from knowing us not impressed with us, but with Jesus.