“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.”
— Genesis 50:20
Joseph didn’t say this from a comfortable distance.
He didn’t say it while reclining in a palace, reminiscing about his teenage dreams as though they were inevitable.
He said it after the pit. After the false accusation. After prison. After years of silence so deafening that the dream he once held felt like a cruel joke he’d played on himself.
He said it having lived through every single thing that should have destroyed him.
And what he said wasn’t, “It all worked out fine.”
What he said was something deeper, something harder, something that requires a kind of faith you can’t manufacture with good vibes and positive thinking:
“God was in it. The whole time. Even the parts that were meant to break me.”
The Faith That Stays in the Pit
That’s a different kind of faith.
Not the faith that says, “Nothing bad will happen to me.”
The faith that says, “Even if it does, God is already in the middle of it, working something I cannot yet see.”
Maybe your pit has a name.
A diagnosis.
A layoff.
A relationship that ended.
A dream that didn’t survive contact with reality.
A season that has gone on so long you’ve stopped calling it a season and started calling it your life.
The pit is real. The pain is real.
And God is also real—and present—and working in the very place you thought He had abandoned.
What If the Pit Isn’t the End?
The pit was not the end of Joseph’s story.
It was the beginning of it.
The prison wasn’t punishment—it was positioning.
Every closed door wasn’t rejection—it was redirection toward something Joseph couldn’t have found any other way.
What if the same is true for you?
What if the thing that fell apart was never supposed to hold you?
What if the plan that collapsed was too small for where God is actually taking you?
What if the pit—as dark and disorienting as it feels—is the most direct route to the very thing you’ve been praying for?
You don’t have to see the whole road.
You just have to trust the One who built it.
A Prayer for Today
Lord,
I’ll be honest—this is not the life I planned.
But I am choosing today to believe that You are not surprised by any of it.
Take what has fallen apart and build something with it that only You could construct.
I trust You with the pieces.
Amen.
Today’s Reflection
Joseph’s story didn’t make sense in the middle.
If you had told him, sitting in the pit or locked in a prison cell, that he was on his way to ruling Egypt, he probably would’ve laughed—or cried.
But the pit wasn’t the end.
It was the path.
So here’s the question:
What if your pit is the path?
What if the thing you’re mourning right now—the plan that fell apart, the dream that didn’t happen, the door that slammed shut—isn’t the end of your story?
What if it’s the beginning of something you can’t see yet?
You don’t have to know how the story ends. You don’t even have to understand the chapter you’re in.
You just have to trust the Author.
And He’s still writing.