When doing right doesn't “go right”
“And Joseph's master took him, and put him into the prison, a place where the king's prisoners were bound: and he was there in the prison. But the LORD was with Joseph, and showed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison.” - Gen 39v20-21
What happens when you do the right thing and things still go wrong? Joseph had definitely done the right thing when he ran from the temptation. The next thing he knows he find himself in prison! I wonder how we would have responded if this had been us? “Lord, I did the right thing and this is what happens to me? How can this be? It just doesn't seem fair!”
It is amazing how easy it is for us to put God in our own little box and expect Him to act in the way we think He should. “If I do the right thing,” we may think, “than God us surely going to honour it.” So far, so good. The problems comes when we define what honouring is. We tend to think that God honouring our action means that everything is going to go right as a result. Sometimes, as we see with Joseph that simply is not the case. Sometimes we can't see what God is doing at all.
There is a key component here in Joseph's situation, “But the Lord was with Joseph...” That s not all though, “ and [the Lord] showed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison.” Did Joseph get out of jail at this time? No, but God was with him where he was and God showed mercy to him while He was there.
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