The Silence is Deafening

I finished Genesis a while back and wanted to write this post but never had the time. I was thinking about my post about how Joseph matured so much and had such great faith but what struck me was that it never directly said that God spoke/appeared to him. A lot of times I hear that God doesn’t do what He did in the Bible anymore but really when you think about it Joseph, from the outside, was a regular Joe. But the cool thing is this, God transformed Joseph throughout his life to bring him to a point where he knew God and lived an amazing life for Him. Joseph never mentions God until he is before the Pharaoh many years after being sold to the Egyptians. He spent years in jail in silence; he could have been bitter and said “Huh! I don’t know what my crazy father was saying about God, I mean look at me!” Instead he came to know God through the silence, through the pain and ultimately lived his childhood dreams of becoming great, but God’s way. In the end Joseph’s brothers are afraid that after the death of Jacob (their father) Joseph will get revenge (sounds like something out of The Godfather Part II) but Joseph turns and says “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” Genesis 50: 20 (that sure didn’t happen in the movie). I used to think that God’s silence was His way of punishing me for doing something wrong, now I’ve seen it is His way of preparing me to do something good.