Good Morning Friends,
“So Joseph went after his brothers and found
them near Dothan. But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them,
they plotted to kill him. ‘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.’ When Reuben heard
this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. ‘Let’s not take his life,’ he
said. ‘Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the desert,
but don’t lay a hand on him.’ Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take
him back to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him
of his robe — the richly ornamented robe he was wearing — and they took him and
threw him into the cistern. Now the cistern was empty; there was no water in it.
As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of
Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and
myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt. Judah said to his
brothers, ‘What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come,
let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he
is our brother, our own flesh and blood.’ His brothers agreed. So when the Midianite
merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold
him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.”
(Genesis 37:18-28)
Joseph was treated with special attention by
his father – including the gift of a multi-colored coat. To his brothers, it
seemed like the attention Joseph received from their father had inflated his
ego and caused him to think that he was someone special. His brothers called
Joseph “that dreamer.” He dreamed of greatness and shared his dream with his
brothers. He dreamed of authority – even over his older brothers – even over
his father. But Joseph’s dreams were not his own visions of grandeur – they were
God’s visions of what Joseph’s future would be like. They were visions of God’s
plans for him.
How do you respond when God gives authority
and blessing and dreams to someone else and not to you?
Joseph’s brothers didn’t know if was God’s
doing – but they were jealous of Joseph’s blessings and of what Joseph thought
the future would hold for him. And in their jealousy, they responded with
hatred and plotted to bring an end to Joseph’s dreams – to bring an end to Joseph.
I doubt that any of us have allowed our
jealousies to take us that far. I doubt that any of have of us done any
physical harm to someone else because we were jealous of their gifts and their opportunities
– at least not since we were children. Still, there are other negative ways to respond
to feelings of jealousy that rise in our spirits. We can wish ill on the one of
whom we are jealous and rejoice (secretly) when things turn negative for them. We
can refuse to support them – not wanting to make their way any easier than it
already seems – and even work to undermine them when given the chance. We can
withdraw our friendship and kindness from them. All of those – and more – are choices
that we can make in response to our jealousy.
Or we can recognize jealousy as a temptation
from the devil and bring it to the Lord for
cleansing.
How do you respond to your jealousy?
His, by Grace,
Steve
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