Joseph’s Comfort in the Midst of Suffering

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Meyer’s 1900 book, Joseph: Beloved, Hated, Exalted, as reprinted in AMG Publishers’ 1995 collection Patriarchs of the Faith.

“…He was there in the prison, but the Lord was with Joseph...” (Gen. 39:20-21). The Lord was with him in the palace of Potiphar, but when Joseph went to prison, the Lord went there too. The only thing which severs us from God is sin: so long as we walk with God, God will walk with us; and if our path dips down from the sunny upland lawns into the valley with its clinging mists, He will go at our side.

The godly man is much more independent of men and things than others. It is God who makes him blessed. Like the golden city, he has no need of sun or moon, for the Lord God is his everlasting light. If he is in a palace he is glad, not so much because of its delights as because God is there. And if he is in a prison, he can sing and give praises, because the God of his love bears him company. To the soul which is absorbed with God, all places and experiences are much the same. “If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night (of sorrow and of confinement) shall be light about me. Yea, the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to Thee” (Ps. 139:11-12).

Moreover, the Lord “showed him mercy.” Oh, wondrous revelation! He did not stand in a niche on the mountainside, as Moses did, while the solemn pomp swept past; and yet the Lord showed him a great sight—His mercy. That prison cell was the mount of vision, from the height of which he saw, as he had never seen before, the panorama of divine lovingkindness. It was well worth his while to go to prison to learn that. When children gather to see the magic lantern, the figures may be flung upon the sheet and yet be invisible because the room is full of light. Darken the room, and instantly the round circle of light is filled with brilliant color. God our Father has often to turn down the lights of our life because He wants to show us mercy.

Whenever you get into prison of circumstances, be on the watch. Prisons are rare places for seeing things. It was in prison that Bunyan saw his wondrous allegory, and Paul met the Lord, and John looked through heaven’s open door, and Joseph saw God’s mercy. God has no chance to show His mercy to some of us except when we are in some sore sorrow. The night is the time to see the stars.

God can also raise up friends for His servants in most unlikely places, and of most unlikely people. “The Lord gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison” (Gen. 39:21). He was probably a rough, unkindly man, quite prepared to copy the dislikes of his master, the great Potiphar, and to embitter the daily existence of this Hebrew slave. But there was another power at work, of which he knew nothing, inclining him towards his ward, and leading him to put him in a position of trust. All hearts are open to our King: at His girdle swing the keys by which the most unlikely door can be unlocked. “When a man’s ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him” (Prov. 16:7). It is as easy for God to turn a man’s heart as it is for the husbandman to turn the course of a brook to carry fertility to an arid plot.

There is always alleviation for our troubles in ministry to others. Joseph found it so. It must have been a welcome relief to the monotony of his grief when he found himself entrusted with the care of the royal prisoners. A new interest came into his life, and he almost forgot the heavy pressure of his own trouble amid the interest of listening to the tales of those who were more unfortunate than himself. It is very interesting to notice what a deep human interest he took in the separate cases of his charges, noticing the expression of their faces, inquiring kindly after their welfare, sitting down to listen to their tale, Joseph is the patron of all prison philanthropists, but he took to this holy work not primarily because he had an enthusiasm for it, but because it gave a welcome opiate to his own griefs.

There is no anodyne* for heart sorrow like ministry to others. If your life is woven with the dark shades of sorrow, do not sit down to deplore in solitude your hapless lot, but arise to seek out those who are more miserable than you are, bearing them balm for their wounds and love for their heartbreaks. And if you are unable to give much practical help, you need not abandon yourself to the gratification of lonely sorrow, for you may largely help the children of bitterness by imitating Joseph in listening to their tales of woe or to their dreams of foreboding.

It is a great art to be a good listener. The burdened heart longs to pour out its tale in a sympathetic ear. There is immense relief in the telling out of pain. But it cannot be hurried; it needs plenty of time; it cannot clear itself of its silt and deposits unless it is allowed leisure to stand. And so the sorrowful turn away from men engaged in the full rush of active life as too busy, and seek out those who, like themselves, have been “winged, “ and are obliged to go softly, as Joseph was, when the servants of Pharaoh found him in the Egyptian dungeon. If you can do nothing else, listen well, and comfort others with the comfort wherewith you yourself have been comforted by God.

And as you listen, and comfort, and wipe the falling tears, you will discover that your own load is lighter, and that a branch or twig of the true tree—the tree of the cross—has fallen into the bitter waters of your own life, making the Marah, Naomi, and the marshes of salt tears will have been healed. Out of such intercourse you will get what Joseph got—the key which will unlock the heavy doors by which you have been shut in.

To those who are suffering wrongfully, do not be surprised. You are the followers of One who was misunderstood from the age of twelve to the day of His ascension; who did not sin, and yet was counted as a sinner; concerning whom the unanimous testimony was, “I find in Him no fault at all” (John 18:39); and yet they called Him Beelzebub! If they spoke thus of the Master of the house, how much more concerning the household! “Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial that is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you” (1 Pet. 4:12); only be sure that you suffer wrongfully, and as a Christian.

Do not get weary in well-doing. Joseph might have said, “I give all up; of what profit is my godliness? I may as well live as others do.” How much nobler was his course of patience continuance in well-doing! Do right, because it is right to do right, because God sees you, because it puts gladness into the heart. And then, when you are misunderstood and ill-treated, you will not swerve, or sit down to whine and despair.

Above all, do not avenge yourselves. When Joseph recounted his trouble, he did not recriminate harshly on his brethren, or Potiphar, or Potiphar’s wife. He simply said: “I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews, and here also have I done nothing that they should put me into the hole” (Gen. 40:15). He might have read the words of the apostle, “Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath” (Rom. 12:19). “If when you do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God” (1 Peter 2:20).

We make a great mistake in trying always to clear ourselves; we should be much wiser to go straight on, humbly doing the next thing, and leaving God to vindicate us. “He will bring forth our righteousness as the light, and our judgment as the noonday” (Ps. 37:6). In Psalm 105:19 there follow words which, rightly rendered, read thus: “the word of the Lord cleared him.” What a triumphant clearing did God give His faithful servant!

There will come hours in all our lives when we shall be misconstrued, misunderstood, slandered, falsely accused, and wrongfully persecuted. At such times it is very difficult not to act on the policy of the men around us in the world. They at once appeal to law and force and public opinion. But the believer takes his case into a higher court, and lays it out before his God. He is prepared to use any means that may appear divinely suggested. But he relies much more on the divine clearing than he does on his own most perfect arrangements. He is content to wait for months and years, till God arise to avenge his cause.

It is a very little thing for him to be judged adversely at the bar of man: he cares only for the judgment of God, and awaits the moment when the righteous shall shine forth in the kingdom of their Father, as the sun when it breaks from all obscuring mists. “When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with Him be manifested in glory” (Col. 3:4). Ah! What a clearing up of mysteries, what dissipating of misunderstandings, what vindication of character shall be there! Oh, slandered ones, you can afford to wait the verdict of eternity; of God, who will bring out your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday.

In all the discipline of life it is of the utmost importance to see but one ordaining overruling will. If we view our imprisonments and misfortunes as the result of human malevolence, our lives will be filled with fret and unrest. It is hard to suffer wrong at the hands of man, and to think that perhaps it might have never been. But there is a truer and more restful view, to consider all things as being under the law and rule of God; so that though they may originate in and come to us through the spite and malice of our fellows, yet, since before they reach us they have had to pass through the environing atmosphere of the divine Presence, they have been transformed into His own sweet will for us.

It was Judas who plotted our Savior’s death, and filled the garden with the capturing bands and flashing lights; and yet the Lord Jesus said that the Father was putting the cup to His lips, And though He was murdered by the chief priests and scribes, yet He so thoroughly acquiesced in the Father’s appointment, that He spoke of laying down His life, as if His death were entirely His own act. There is no evil to them that love God; and the believer loses sight of second causes, so absorbed is he in the contemplation of the unfolding of the mystery of his Father’s will. As the dying Charles Kingsley said, “All is under law.”

We must not be surprised when dark passages come in our outward life, or our inner experience. Unbroken sunshine would madden our brains, and unsullied prosperity of soul or circumstances would induce a spiritual excitement, which would be in the last degree deleterious. We must be sometime deprived of feeling, that we may acquire the arts of walking by faith. We must lose the supporting cork belts that we may be compelled to trust ourselves to the buoyant wave. We must descend into the darksome glen, that we may test for ourselves the reliability of the staff and the rod, which before we may have considered as superfluities or as ornaments.

*Anodyne: A medicine that relieves pain, or, figuratively, anything that calms, comforts, or soothes disturbed feelings.

Frederick Brotherton Meyer (1847-1929) was a Baptist pastor and evangelist in England. Born in London, he studied theology at Regent's Park College, Oxford, and began pastoring churches in 1870.