IS COMPLAINING EVER OKAY?

…God meant it for good 

in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.

Genesis 50:20

I am struck this morning by Joseph’s story[1] and wondering what it means for me.

His father had indulged in a lifetime of self-pity, using phrases like, “Everything is going against me!” (Genesis 42:36) to elicit sympathy and to manipulate his sons.

And yet Joseph never complains. Never.

Not even when at the age of 17 he finds himself a slave in a foreign land. Nor is a grumble of despair heard from him when, a few years later, he is falsely accused of attempted rape and tossed without trial into prison.

For thirteen long years Joseph was a slave and a prisoner. In those supposedly “best years of life” Joseph was in the worst possible circumstances.

And here I am in the best possible circumstances… complaining!

Why is that?

Well, to be honest, I think its because I do not believe, deep down where it counts, that God is taking care of me.

I mean I know He is, but that knowing gets lost somewhere in that 18 inch space between my brain and my heart and…

I am not convinced that in this moment God is taking care of me.

And that is because I have swallowed a lie.

Just as Eve was tempted to take a bite, I have willingly crunched and munched and fully digested that slippery, satanic idea that when not-so-good things happen to me, God is not taking care of me very well.

And yet…

Look at Joseph’s story. Can there be any doubt that in those dark days, God was at work?  That He was purposely using every single circumstance to train Joseph for a position that enabled him to save vast numbers of people from annihilation through starvation?

Do I really believe that He’ll do the same for me? That He’ll use every uncomfortable and inconvenient moment of my every days to train me for a task which I cannot foresee?

Because if I really believe that, right down where it counts, then there is really no room for complaining.

At all.

And that truth just might change the way I think today…

From my heart,

Diane

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[1] Genesis 37-50