Your Story

As I think about Joseph, the man who should have been king, I think about all of the things in our lives that we don't get to choose. 

We don't get to choose what family we're born into. We don't get to choose how that family story has taken shape over the generations before us. We don't get to choose how the fallen world around us acts. We don't get to choose how the other peoples in the world respond. 

What we get to choose, to some degree, is how our own story unfolds. 

We get to choose whether we're going to live with an entitlement mindset, moping around because the world isn't what we think it should be. Grieving because this world is holding us back. Angry with those who can't get on board with what our lives were supposed to be. Abusive, trying to make the world conform so that our lives look like they were supposed to look. 

Or we can choose to become carpenters and recognize that it may not be what it was meant to be, but we're building something anyway. And it's going to be good. 

That doesn't mean that Joseph's life was without troubles just because he chose to make the best of his situation, just because he chose to be a builder. 

He still had to deal with splinters. He had to deal with pieces of wood that wouldn't do what he needed them to do. He struggled against the boards that just wouldn't lay flat or straighten out or even those that wouldn't curve just right (yes, you can curve wood). He probably hit his thumb a time or two, missed a couple of nails now and then, had to scrap some plans and go back to the drawing board. 

He had to learn to live with the frustrations of the things he was building if he intended to continue to build his life. 

And aren't we glad that he did?

Because he became the earthly father to the man who would be all the things he ever dreamed to be...and more. He was entrusted to build something greater than any blueprint he'd ever been given. Or rather, to the master blueprint he'd put his faith and hope and trust in all his life. He was faithful to his Lord, and he was faithful to his life, and somehow, his quiet little life that he chose to be present for becomes this background story to the life that shook the gates of Hell themselves. 

He didn't choose that, either. 

He didn't choose to be used by God; he only chose to let God use him if the Lord so desired. He set himself up to be part of God's story, however that was going to look. He opened himself to the possibility that God might do something with his life. Very early on when we meet him, we are told what kind of man he was - a man who didn't want to disgrace a young woman he loved, even though she seemed to have disgraced herself. 

He was full of the spirit of the Lord, and that made him a great choice to father the King. To mentor the King. To teach the King. 

To pass on the little things that he knew, about life, about the Lord, about grace and kindness and goodness. 

About the nails. 

Man, what an incredible story. All because he chose to be a carpenter instead of grumbling about not being a king. 

Of all of the things you don't get to choose in this world, you get to choose this: you get to choose how you'll live in the face of it. And when you do, you decide how God can use you.

How will you let God use you?