The Survivors’ Creed (Max Lucado)
I will get through this.
It won’t be painless. It won’t be quick.
But God will use this mess for good.
In the meantime, don’t be foolish or naive.
But don’t despair either.
With God’s help, I will get through this.

These words were inspired from Max Lucado’s new book and DVD series, “You’ll Get Through This.” I found a link to the first video while I was going through Twitter. The video was about the story of Joseph, how he struggled early in his life but never developed bitterness about the difficulties he went through or against the very people he called brothers who sold him to slavery. Max had wonderful insights about the story. He mentions about how the brothers threw Joseph into a pit and ate afterwards as if nothing happened. He talked about how, in the end, they realized how merciless they were, seeing the pleading in Joseph’s eyes and ignoring it nevertheless. But even as Joseph rose from one position to another, only to be beset by new difficulties, he still continued to look up to God. He never lost sight of God and therefore, was never bitter.

Max said that the story of Joseph was in the Bible to teach us that God trumps evil in the world. And there are times when we feel that he doesn’t care about our situation or that he is taking His time. God may take His time but He never wastes our time. In the midst of His apparent silence, He works in us and through us to mold us and prepare us for greater things. We may feel at times that the situation is hopeless and unfair, and that we seem to be assigned to a curriculum we didn’t sign up for. But God, in His great wisdom put us there for a reason. He wants us to learn something. Like Joseph whom He prepared for the biggest task of all which is saving the ancient world from the most devastating famine ever known in the history of mankind, He prepares each one of us for a bigger task, which may be unknown or unfathomable by us at present. We just have to trust that whatever difficulty we are in at the moment, with God’s help, we will get through it. God is in the business of getting His people through all kinds of situations. Getting through the Red Sea, through the fire, through the wilderness, even through crucifixions. And while we are in the toughest situation which makes us sitting ducks for stupid decisions, we should keep hanging on to Him until He gets us safely across.

Thrown into the pit by his brothers, abandoned and rejected – Joseph never failed to lose sight of the fact that he was God’s child. And having experienced a tough day myself today, I felt a small fraction of what Joseph felt back then. But the good thing about being in a pit, dark, damp and cold as it is – is that there is only one way to look, and that is up. Up to the one who holds our future, all our hopes, dreams and aspirations. And as Max said at the closing of his video, the God who pulled Joseph out of the pit and made him the prince of the palace, is the same God who reaches to each one of us right now in our time of despair.