Sometimes, we are led into a difficult place that appears to have no hope. It is in that desperate place where the Lord will reveal the reasons why He allowed such things to happen.

Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery and that slavery was used by God to reveal his gifts to those who held him captive. In that revelation, each slave owner that Joseph served saw his worth. Joseph was advanced by the Lord to become the ruler of each domain where his gifts were revealed. God’s intended destination for Joseph was to serve the Pharoah as his second in command.

After many years, as the pain and loss of a famine had overcome the land, Jacob, Joseph’s father told his sons to go to Egypt to buy food. Through a process of testing his brothers, it was now time for Joseph to reveal his true identity to his brothers. It would become a very emotional moment for Joseph and his brothers.

As Joseph addressed his brothers, he began to weep loudly as he told his brothers that he was Joseph, the son his father Jacob had thought was long dead. “Please, come closer,” he said to them. So, they came closer. And he said again, ‘I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into slavery in Egypt. But don’t be upset, and don’t be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place. It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives” (Genesis 45: 4-5).

Joseph explained in detail what happened to him over the years of their separation, “God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors. So, it was God who sent me here, not you! And he is the one who made me an adviser to Pharaoh—the manager of his entire palace and the governor of all Egypt” (vs. 7-8).

At last, when all was said, “Then Joseph kissed each of his brothers and wept over them, and after that, they began talking freely with him” (vs. 15).

The restoration of Joseph’s family was so complete that he gave his brothers this instruction, “Don’t quarrel about all this along the way!” (vs. 24). It would have been easy for his brothers to argue among each other about who was blame, but the time for blame had passed.

When the brothers returned home and told their father what had happened and how all his sons were still alive, “Their father’s spirits revived” (vs. 27).

It is too easy to be so surrounded by the difficulties of life that we cannot see the hand of God at work in our circumstances. Both the innocent and the guilty in these situations can miss God’s greater purposes at work. God does not waste these seasons of personal difficulty. It is in these difficult times that He reveals His plan of redemption that can save a family, even using His plan of restoration to save even a nation.