I love art museums.
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam—the Louvre in Paris—the Art Institute in Chicago. The Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin. I have loved spending hours there, though there was never enough time to see it all. You know, there’s good reason why the viewing rooms in these places are LARGE. Big spaces with benches. Some masterpieces enjoy the solitude of having a whole room all to themselves.
Why is that? So the observer can look closely, get the artist’s view as they were painting it, and then … back up. You often wonder, “How in the world did the artist know, by blending those colors, or twisting the brush just so, that it would look like THAT from a distance?” Nondescript blobs of oil paint that, from afar, look like shining water … or lustrous satin … or LIGHT?
It’s amazing what you’re able to see when you stand back.
“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.” (Genesis 50:20 ESV)
This Scripture is the last brushstroke of the masterpiece—the epic tale of grief and glory—the story of Joseph. It’s the signature of the Artist. The final touch that sets the record straight at last.
You know Joseph’s story. (Genesis 37-50) The pain of the pit and the prison. Imagine, the hurt of being hated just because you’re YOU. Of just trying to be the best version of yourself you could be—and for THAT, being lied about, wrongly punished, and forgotten—left to rot all alone … for years. Gifts discarded, talents tossed aside.
But, in one verse, we discover that it wasn’t the brothers’ hatred, or the Midianite caravan, or the ill intent of Potiphar’s wife, or the short memory of Pharoah’s butler that set the tone for Joseph’s troubles. Not for a moment. There was a bigger WHY. If you examine any part of the story up close, you might miss the whole purpose behind it all.
To see it, you have to STAND BACK. When you do, you realize that every sad piece of the puzzle, making no sense with its dark colors, smeared by blood and blurred by tears are ESSENTIAL to the whole point of the picture—that is, to get Joseph into a position of power to save not just the Children of Israel, but the world. There was no other way.
In everything that happens to us, God is working. He is in EVERYTHING, and He is always directing the details toward two goals: His glory and our good. No matter how painful the twists and turns of Joseph’s life felt, the FACT remained that God was working every brushstroke of every rejection toward ultimate redemption—every grievous setback toward His GLORY and Joseph’s GOOD.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.” (Isaiah 55:8 KJV)
We may want to examine every hurtful thing that happens to us—every scary piece of news, every bitter disappointment—every storm, every pain, every lonely night, every unanswered prayer—with a magnifying glass. Up close, picking apart every stinging detail again and again. “Why? Why? WHY?!!” But doing that will NEVER give us the answers we seek.
No. We MUST force our feet to move—BACK. Pull away from the grief—distance ourselves away from the confusion and hurt—but keep our eyes wide OPEN to see … the BIGGER picture. The WHOLE canvas. The TRUE story told in colors we could never understand at the stroke of the brush, but … standing BACK … it all becomes clear. Every tear, every drop of blood, every prayer … FITS perfectly into the larger picture that HE is creating, and all will be redeemed in the end. The dark outlines, the black shadows don’t detract—they give definition and clarity to the bright spots of vibrant happy color that we had not seen before—and it ALL makes perfect sense somehow.
“Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” (John 13:7 ESV)
BUT, WAIT! … it gets even better! There’s a BIGGER canvas behind all THIS! That we will not see until Heaven—when we ALL stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Joseph … and ALL the martyrs and heroes of faith from all the ages … with JESUS! When we behold with new eyes the glorious PANORAMIC STORY of love and life, glory and good that goes on and on … FOREVER. And we will have all the time in eternity to enjoy it. Every tear HERE is a part of THAT story … and, on THAT glorious day, we will not have wanted it any other way.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully…” (1 Corinthians 13:12 ESV)
(NOTE: The image at the beginning of this post is a small detail from the painting titled Morning Tide – Coast of Cornwall (c. 1913) by American painter Walter Elmer Schofield.)
