Scripture Reflection: Joseph the Patriarch, Dream Giver

Delight in the Lord, and as you dream His dream, He will conquer those things meant for evil and renew the face of the earth.

BETHPAGE, TN (Catholic Online) - What is it about dreamers that irritates us so? We might admire them for their vision and for pushing the limits of the status quo to pursue something higher than what we have personally or collectively yet experienced, but we do it secretly. Often, their vision suggests how different they are, maybe special, and we resist that anyone but we ourselves might be chosen for greatness. And besides, someone has to be faithful and reliable and responsible.

Maybe their persistence and relentlessness convicts us for our own laziness. How does one balance a desire to soar with humility and charity? I wonder what Mother Teresa's contemporaries thought of her when she said she wanted to do something for God that had never been done before. Is this pride, or something else?

Joseph was one of those dreamers. Full of youthful enthusiasm and the advantages of parental favoritism, like most dreamers, he felt it necessary to share his annoying, prideful dreams with everyone around him, and he garnered their jealousy and anger.

"Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers ... and Joseph brought an ill report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he made him a long robe with sleeves. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him. Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they only hated him the more.

"He said to them, 'Hear this dream which I have dreamed: behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf arose and stood upright; and behold, your sheaves gathered round it, and bowed down to my sheaf.'

"His brothers said to him, 'Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to have dominion over us?' So they hated him yet more for his dreams and for his words.

"Then he dreamed another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, 'Behold, I have dreamed another dream; and behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.'

"But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him, and said to him, 'What is this dream that you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you?' And his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the saying in mind" (Gen. 37).

At first glance, it almost seems as though Joseph got what he deserved. Tattling on his brothers and claiming unnatural positions over them certainly necessitated someone bringing him back down to earth. But I suspect Joseph was simply young and indiscreet, excited, maybe overly so, about what he might have believed his destiny.

In the end, however, Joseph's dreams of greatness made his brothers jealous and angry enough to sell him to foreigners. For the next thirteen years his life became a series of hateful events that seemed to prove true the proverb "No good deed goes unpunished."

Bought by an official who made Joseph steward of his home, he was a faithful and brilliant manager, yet an unrequited attraction by the master's wife led to false accusations and imprisonment. Although the Scriptures point out that God's favor was on him (39:2), Joseph's slavery was nevertheless followed by years of confinement in prison. Yet even there, vestiges of Joseph's dream were becoming evident, for there too, while buried in the recesses of prison, Joseph sharpened his management skills when the warden placed him over the whole prison.

When Pharaoh's butcher and baker each had dreams while serving their sentences, Joseph offered the wisdom and instruction of God and obliged their help, "But remember me, when it is well with you, and do me the kindness, I pray you, to make mention of me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this house. For I was indeed stolen out of the land of the Hebrews; and here also I have done nothing that they should put me into the dungeon" (Gen. 40:14-15).

What might have been his imminent rescue became two more long years of waiting, for Joseph remained in the dungeon until Pharaoh had his own need for God's wisdom. It was only then that the butler remembered Joseph to Pharaoh, who enlisted Joseph to interpret his royal dreams and save Egypt from the disaster of famine. Joseph was rewarded with honor and status, and as he rose to power, he found love and happiness.

But when a sudden twist of providence catapults him into the fulfillment of his notorious boyhood dreams and reunites Joseph with his rival brothers, Joseph must face excruciating questions about God's sovereignty and decisions of forgiveness. After years of slavery and mistreatment, injustice, false accusation and imprisonment, and a shocking confrontation with his traitorous brothers, Joseph shares the splendor of what he has learned with them:

"I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life ... So it was not you who sent me here, but God; and he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good..."

Joseph knows what every true dreamer of God learns: that they must be rigorously tested and prepared to serve. It isn't until the Psalms that we get a clear view of God's plan.

"Then [God] called down a famine on the land, destroyed the grain that sustained them. He had sent a man ahead of them, Joseph, sold as a slave. They shackled his feet with chains; collared his neck in iron, Till his prediction came to pass, and the word of the LORD proved him true. The king sent and released him; the ruler of peoples set him free. He made him lord over his palace, ruler over all his possessions, To instruct his princes by his word, to teach his elders wisdom" (Psalm 105).

You may no longer be able or willing to describe it. You may have received it so long ago that you have long since renounced it as false, and even tried desperately to kill it. But your dream is still there. To abdicate the dream is as sinful as grasping at it, because the Dream Giver gave it to you. "Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4).

Delighting ourselves in the Lord is the long, arduous journey of obedience and instruction through risk, fear, pride, discouragement, and obstruction. What seems like a road full of obstacles is actually a series of preparations, necessary for competently living the dream that God both inspires and fulfills. The only test of whether you are a dreamer or false prophet is the fulfillment of the dream, and only those who delight in the Lord persevere long enough to do so.

We need not be jealous of those dreamers, or aspire overmuch to be one, for it is God who prepares them. We need not worry excessively about their priorities, pride, impulsiveness, or idealism, for the caravan is already on the way to carry them to the dungeon of character building and humility. By the time we see them again we will hardly recognize that it is they through whom God is teaching and sustaining us.

If we have received a dream and truly delight in the Lord, we must anticipate arduous years of circumstances, relationships, and directors that will drive humility into the core of our soul and thus prepare us for the fulfillment. The Scriptures and Saints testify that God always deeply humbles those who are called to greatness. We need only cooperate with His actions and rest in them.

Each of Joseph's brothers, shepherds all, received their due portion and inheritance for faithful and precious service to the family. It is imperative that most remain safely and happily at home to work and keep godly order, as important a calling as any other. But someone is called to be sold into slavery to have the presumption and pride beaten out of him so he can competently and humbly rescue the people. Someone is called to dream.

The dream that God gives will survive every servitude, constraint, humiliation, degradation, accusation, discouragement and jealousy, because it is a glimmer of the eternity of the Giver. To deny the dream God gives is to deny Him and the new creation He intends to bring to the earth through it. Delight in the Lord, and as you dream His dream, He will conquer those things meant for evil and renew the face of the earth.

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Sonja Corbitt is a Catholic Scripture teacher, study author and speaker. She is a contributing writer for Catholic Online. Visit her at www.pursuingthesummit.com and www.pursuingthesummit.blogspot.com.

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