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I admit that sometimes I do not understand the ways that God chooses.

For example, a young girl has a brief fling with a boy in the navy, gets pregnant, and never tells the father she is expecting a child. That child lives the next 17 years of his life on a wild ride with his restless mother. The childhood, for the most part, was pretty miserable and unstable, to say the least. From the West Coast to the East Coast and back again, he was shuffled between homes and schools. Miraculously, one of his mother’s men turns out to be a really good guy, a father who would love him and give him his name. Hallelujah, a rescue was about to happen in the life of the boy! But then, unexpectedly, he gets yanked away once more without so much as a quick goodbye.

Why couldn’t the girl let the boy stay with his caring, stable adopted father who loved him? When the boy cried alone in the dark over the years in strange hotels and in strange beds, where was God?

I know I would not be here, this church would not be here, but for the journey that that the little boy took. Every twist and turn had a purpose. Had the story been any different, had it not happened the way it happened, the boy would not be the man he is today, the man I married.

The history of Joseph, which takes up a third of the book of Genesis, takes a young boy on a wild ride as well. I wonder how many tears were shed over long years—the hatred of his brothers that took him from the depths of a dry cistern to a slave market in Egypt, back again to a prison, and forgotten by all who could have intervened. How many times had he cried out in the darkness? Where was God? And yet here I am writing, and here you are reading these thoughts on Joseph.

We often see in the Scriptures that God is at work in the very crooked paths—paths that we think could never be made straight—making a way for His plans to unfold. It was not despite the dark days of pain and sorrow that Greg, or Joseph, or any one of us, can come to seek God’s help and know His love; it is because of them.

The years that lead up to Greg’s conversion in 1970 were not outside of God’s good plan. The tears made him tender. The loneliness made him seek a love that couldn’t ever be taken away. The sudden moves from coast to coast made him long for stability and a family of his own. That’s where I come into the picture. I wouldn’t be here writing this message and thinking about treasures that come, not despite the darkness, but in the darkness.

So we could say that regardless of the foolishness of Jacob and naiveté of Joseph, God will have his way. Nothing . . . nothing can alter God’s purposes. Psalm 105 recounts the story of Joseph. We are told that “God called a famine on the land . . . and sent a man before them; Joseph was sold for a bondman. They hurt his feet with fetters; his soul came into irons . . . until the time when what he said came about; the word of Jehovah tried him.”

I found this passage, which was written with the perfect 20/20 vision of hindsight, entirely enlightening. And I wonder how many of us are so familiar with the story that we miss its brutality. But Joseph himself would say, “It was God who did it.” It was His plan. And as a result of that plan in the life of Joseph today, we are here learning lessons so profound and mysterious, lessons that point to the greater Joseph—the One who for us willingly came to be abandoned, rejected, stripped, and forsaken that we might have His love.

I will admit, I want the treasure, but not the darkness where it is to be found . . . and I find myself praying, “Father, if there be any other way . . . Nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done.”

God will have His way . . . and it will be good.

When trials come no longer fear

For in the pain our God draws near

To fire a faith worth more than gold

And there His faithfulness is told

Within the night I know Your peace

The breath of God brings strength to me

And new each morning mercy flows

As treasures of the darkness grow . . .

Lyrics by Kristyn and Keith Getty