Thursday, May 14, 2026
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Genesis 40-42
- Secondary Reading: Psalms 56
Key Verse
Genesis 41:37 — “And the thing was good in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of all his servants.”
Devotional Thought
Most of us know what it is to wait on a promise that seems forgotten. Joseph certainly did. In Genesis 40, he interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh’s butler and baker with quiet confidence: “Do not interpretations belong to God?” He asked only one thing of the butler—remember me. Yet the chapter ends with a sentence that stings: “Yet did not the chief butler remember Joseph, but forgat him.” Two full years would pass before Pharaoh’s dreams of seven fat kine and seven lean kine, of seven full ears and seven blasted with the east wind, brought Joseph out of the dungeon. In that long silence, Joseph had no evidence that God was working. He had only the character of God.
What strikes me is how Joseph spent the waiting. He did not sulk in the prison; he noticed the sadness on two prisoners’ faces and asked, “Wherefore look ye so sadly to day?” He served, he interpreted, he trusted God with the outcome. When he stood before Pharaoh at last, he refused the credit: “It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace.” And when Pharaoh set him over all Egypt, Joseph did not merely survive the years of plenty—he gathered corn “as the sand of the sea” until it was without number, storing bread for a famine he would never have chosen.
Then comes Genesis 42, and the promise of Joseph’s youth quietly comes true. His ten brothers bow with their faces to the earth before the governor of Egypt, not knowing they bow to their own brother. The dream God gave a teenager in Canaan is fulfilled in a grain office in Egypt, decades later, through slavery, slander, and prison. God’s timing is rarely our timing. As spring turns toward summer and we mark ordinary days, we may feel that some promise of God lies dormant. Joseph’s story says otherwise: the forgotten years were not wasted years. God was storing up bread we could not yet see.
Reflection
- Where in your life has God seemed silent for “two full years”—and what would it look like to keep serving faithfully, as Joseph did in the prison, while you wait?
- Joseph wept privately when he heard his brothers’ guilt, yet still dealt firmly with them. How does his example shape the way you handle old wounds when the past suddenly stands before you?
Prayer
Lord God, who rules the plenty and the famine, teach us to trust You in the waiting as Joseph did. When we are forgotten by men, remind us that we are never forgotten by You; You tell our wanderings and put our tears into Your bottle. Give us grace to serve faithfully in the dungeon seasons, to speak of You rather than ourselves, and to forgive those who wounded us, even as You preserved Joseph to save his brothers. We praise You that Your word is true and Your timing perfect. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Psalm Verse
Psalms 56:1 — “Be merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me.”