losing one’s life for one’s own purposes
“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” – Luke 9:24
When the time came for God to fulfill Joseph’s dreams, Joseph himself had no interest in it. Jesus said, “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:24). God wants to teach us a different set of values so that the kind of thing we want becomes secondary. God has something in mind for us that is much bigger than our interests.
The day of Joseph’s glory had come. Yet, amidst all this, a very real humiliation had to be endured. We know about the humiliation that Joseph experienced for 13 years after being sold into slavery by his brothers and then taken to Egypt. We know how he was falsely accused and put in jail.
Then a different situation came. Joseph was conquered and given great honor, but honor he never really asked for. He didn’t seem to be interested in what was about to happen. He saw that Pharaoh took his ring off his finger and placed it on Joseph’s finger. Joseph never asked for it. He just wanted to go home. He desired to return to Canaan, see his father, and fulfill his dreams.
So, here we find an extraordinary dissonance: an insult at the heart of vengeance. A victory that was contrary to everything he himself had imagined. Joseph wanted to go home, but there was no one-way ticket available to Canaan. Before he knew it, he had Egypt in his hip pocket. He never prayed for this. But God wanted Egypt. Joseph got what God wanted.
Joseph was given something he could rely on because it didn’t mean that much to him.
(RT Kendall, A Treasury of Wisdom Journal (Uhrichsville, Ohio: Barbour & Company, 1996), January 16 Day Reading, Email Books).
