"Do Not Interpretations Belong to God?"

JOSEPH walked along the dark corridor, dripping with sweat from his toil in the stifling heat. Outside the Egyptian sun was baking the prison like a kiln. It seemed at times as if he knew every brick in the palace, every crack in every wall. This was his whole entire world now. True, he was highly regarded here. Nonetheless, he was a prisoner.

How often he must have cast his thoughts back to his life in the high rocky hills in Hebron, where he had tended his father's flocks!  He was about 17 years old when his father, Jacob, sent him on an errand that took him dozens of miles (km) from home. Such freedom seemed almost unimaginable now. Joseph's jealous brothers had turned on him with murderous hatred and then sold him as a slave. He wast taken down to Egypt, where he first  served in the household of the Egyptian official Potiphar. Joseph held his master's trust until a false accusation of rape from Potiphar's wife landed him here in this prison. -Genesis, chapter 37, 39. 

Joseph was 28 years old now, with about a decade of slavery and imprisonment behind him.  To put it mildly, his life was not turning out as he had hoped.  Would he ever be set free?  Would he see his dear elderly father again or his beloved younger brother, Benjamin?  How long would he be stuck in this put?

Have you ever felt as Joseph did?  Sometimes life turns out to be a far cry from our youthful hopes. Indeed, painful situations can seem to drag on endlessly, and it can be hard to see a way out or a way to endure. Let us see what we can learn from the faith of Joseph.

Next time: "Do Not Interpretations Belong To God?" -"JEHOVAH CONTINUED WITH JOSEPH" 

From the Watchtower magazine, 2015