If you are waiting on God for something this week, Joseph is good company. He spent thirteen years in a pit and a prison with no record of God speaking to him once. Then a door opened, and Pharaoh offered him everything he had waited for. All he had to do was agree. Instead, he said, "It is not I; God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer."

That is not modesty. Joseph was telling the truth about the room: God was in it, and Joseph was the only man who could see. By the end of that conversation, Pharaoh is speaking the name of God himself. Giving God the glory is not making ourselves small. It is witness.

But Joseph is not our final answer; he is only its shadow. His story has a shape we have heard before: a beloved son, rejected, sold for silver, then raised to the king’s right hand. Jesus did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, obedient even to death on a cross. He went down into a far deeper dungeon than Joseph's, and on the third morning the tomb came open. So when we are in our own dungeons, Jesus is not an example to copy. He is the One who has already been there, who was raised, and who holds us now.

Entrust. Joseph promised Pharaoh peace before he had heard a word of the dream. Gratitude afterward is easy; trust beforehand is hard and holy.

Behold. Where has God been at work in your life this year that you have never once said out loud?

Good Shepherd Church of India's Pastor Samuel has served a small fellowship in East India for nineteen years under real pressure. When I last asked how things were, he didn't give me a list of all his challenges. He told me about two sisters who reconciled after eleven years apart. And when our leaders offered to move him somewhere safer, he asked instead for Bibles in his own language, so his people would have God's word whether or not he was still standing.  That is Beholding.  That is Entrusting.

A prayer for the week

Lord Jesus, You have been in the dark place before me, and You are already in every room I will walk into. Give me eyes to see what You are doing, courage to say it out loud, and open hands to entrust You with what I am still holding. Keep Pastor Samuel, and all who follow You, under pressure. Amen.