The Bible tells us that God has a plan for using every experience in our lives. This makes understanding and reacting to good times a little easier—we can be grateful for them as a foretaste of the better times to come. But it makes it harder to react to difficulties the way we want to. Joseph understood that the story he was part of was bigger than the scenes he could see.

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Joseph built up Egypt’s storehouses so that he would be able to give away what they stored up. Opening all of Egypt’s storehouses during a famine was the culmination of much of Joseph’s life up to that point, and it wouldn’t have been possible had God not given him the opportunity to develop wisdom and character.

Unfortunately, this week’s sermon is not available in audio format because of a technical difficulty. We hope to have a detailed summary or a transcript available next week, but in the mean time, download the bulletin that goes along with this sermon’s worship service.

We all think we have a decent handle on what the story of our lives are up until now, and we have some decent ideas about how it might progress. Christianity, however, often invites us to read our story very differently: It tells us the ending, and encourages us to re-read everything that comes before in light of what we know about the ending. After the death of his father, Joseph demonstrates this backwards reading to his brothers.