Reflection for August 9 — Proper 14
Genesis 37:12–28 · Psalm 105 (Part Two) · Matthew 14:22–33
We talk a lot these days about toxic traits.
It comes up everywhere, and it comes up in my online research. The harsh parent. The sibling who competes instead of loves. The relative you brace yourself for. It’s like many of us have become a little bit of an armchair psychologist. We have the words now: boundaries, narcissism, the golden child, the scapegoat. A lot of the information is good. There’s real wisdom in finally having language for the moments that hurt you.
But sitting with Joseph this week, what struck me is that none of this is new.
We might think we’ve discovered something about human beings as we dive into these topics, and we haven’t. Open the very first book of the Bible and there it is, in the oldest family we’ve got. A father who plays favourites right out in the open, and hands one son a coat the others will never get. Brothers eaten up with jealousy. Name-calling, here comes this dreamer. A plot to kill him. And when killing him starts to feel like too much, a colder idea: why waste him, when we could sell him and make a little money? Their own brother, for silver.
Maybe you sit at a table with family and wonder whether the tougher stuff you carry is unique to you. The Bible reminds us it isn’t. You are in very old company. It has stories like this from the very beginning.
Joseph finds himself in a pit.
Picture it honestly. He’s young. He’s just been thrown into a hole in the ground by the people he came from, and he can hear them up above him, close enough to hear, settling on what he’s worth. Twenty pieces of silver.
The text tells us nothing about what Joseph is feeling. Not a word. We don’t get his prayer, we don’t get his despair, we don’t get some noble speech about trusting the plan. We just get the pit.
And I think that silence lets us be honest. Of course he doubted. Down in that hole, I imagine it felt like the end of the story, like this was the conclusion. Like whatever he’d dreamed his life might be, this dry well was where it actually landed.
It probably felt like the end. But it was the middle. He just couldn’t see that from where he was.
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to. All of that language we’ve learned, all that good information about difficult people, nearly all of it is about them. It helps us understand the brothers. It helps us name why the father played favourites, why the family soured the way it did. That’s worth something. But knowing exactly why your brothers threw you in the pit does not, by itself, get you out of the pit.
Joseph’s story doesn’t turn on him finally understanding his brothers. It turns on what he does with his own heart while he can’t see the way out.
That’s harder work. But it’s more hopeful work, because it’s the part that belongs to us. You can spend a lifetime becoming an expert on the people who hurt you. Or you can tend the one thing that’s actually yours to tend, which is the next faithful step out of the hole you’re in.
For me, right now, it’s walking into a room where I don’t know anyone yet. Nearly two years ago, I moved to a new town, Cowansville. I’m on my own now. And there are days I’d sooner stay home, in the garden, in the kitchen, out in the woods with my camera. But none of us survive alone, not even the introverts among us. So showing up here, meeting my neighbours, building a life in this community, that’s my next faithful step. I can’t see how it turns out either. I just have to take it.
Joseph can’t see his own arc, his future. But we can.
Listen again to what we just sang. You sent one ahead of them, Joseph, whom they had sold as a slave. His feet were hurt with fetters, his neck was collared with iron. The psalm sees the whole thing, him being sent ahead, released, made master of the house. It holds the entire arc of a life over the head of a boy in a pit who can feel none of it.
That’s us, on a Sunday morning. We sing the arc we cannot yet feel. We say the words about a God who sends us ahead, and does not abandon, who is working a story too long for us to see the end of, and we say them precisely because so often we are the one in the pit, unable to see up and out. We don’t sing because the whole road is visible. We sing in the dark, and we trust anyway.
There’s one more picture I want to leave you with. It comes from the Matthew reading, the one we didn’t read aloud this morning.
It’s the story of another person who couldn’t see the way through. Peter, out on the water in the dark, the storm making him fearful and unsteady. In this case, what saves Peter is not that he figures it out. He doesn’t master the storm or analyze the wind or finally understand. What saves him is three words. Lord, save me.
He asks for help. In the moment when he can’t see the shore, the faithful thing isn’t to have it all worked out. It’s to reach out a hand and say, I can’t do this alone. Asking for help is also an act of faith. Maybe the deepest one.
So here is what I’d send you off with this week.
You do not need to see the whole road. You are not required to know how the story ends before you take the next step. Joseph didn’t. Peter didn’t.
And not every pit is the same. When you’re in the pit, and some of us are, right now, it isn’t always a person who put us there. Sometimes it’s an irreversible loss. A grief with no other side we can see. Sometimes there’s no one to understand and nothing to figure out. There’s just the pit, and the next breath.
And when it is a person, you don’t have to become the world’s foremost expert on the ones who put you there. Find the next faithful place to stand.
One thing that helps me come back is simple: slow down and sense. Ask what you can see, hear, smell, feel, taste. Outside there’s so much for your senses that it pulls you out of the spinning and sets you back down in the now. And from that quieter place, you can hear your own next step more clearly.
And when you’ve tried everything and can’t see the way out, reach out a hand and ask. That, too, is faith.
The picture is unfinished. It’s supposed to be. Storms end, and most dark moments are the middle, not the conclusion. And the God who stayed with Joseph, who reached for Peter on the water, is with you in the part of the story you cannot yet see.
Thanks be to God.
Taking It Into Your Week
Some practical steps for the week ahead.
Name the pit without fixing it. Sometime this week, when a hard feeling rises, try naming it plainly to yourself: this is grief, this is fear, this is the pit. You don’t have to solve it or explain it. Joseph’s silence gave us permission to be honest, and honesty is its own kind of relief.
Take one step that’s yours. Notice where you’ve been busy analyzing someone who hurt you. Then set that down, just for now, and ask a different question: what is the one next faithful step that actually belongs to me? Take it, even if it’s super small, even if you can’t see where it leads.
Practise Peter’s three words. Ask for help once this week, out loud, from a person or from God. Not because you’ve failed, but because reaching out a hand is an act of faith. See how it feels to say I can’t do this alone.
Come back to the present. When the spinning starts, use the practice below to set yourself back down in the now.
The Pleasure of Presence
A short grounding practice for the week
This is the practice I mean when I say slow down and sense. It takes as little as one minute, though it’s lovely to linger. Do it outside if you can, at a window if you can’t, and right where you are if that’s all this moment allows. There is no wrong way to do it.
1. Arrive. Sit or stand still. Let the phone rest in your pocket, or use it to set a timer if that frees you from watching the clock. Feel the ground or the floor beneath your feet. Take one slow breath, and let it be a little longer on the way out.
2. See. Look at what is in front of you. Focus on a few details before you: the light on a leaf, the movement of a bird, a colour you hadn’t noticed. Let your eyes rest on one thing that pleases you.
3. Hear. Listen for the near sounds, then the far ones. The hum close by, the birdsong further off, the quiet underneath it all. Listen to what is, even if there is a lawnmower or another machine in the background.
4. Feel. Notice the air on your skin, the temperature, the texture of whatever you’re touching. Feel your own body in this space. Where is there ease? Offer yourself comfort where there’s tension.
5. Smell. Breathe in. What’s in the air? Cut grass, rain, coffee, warm earth, nothing in particular. Simply notice.
6. Taste. Open your mouth and breathe in to taste the air, or take a slow sip of water, and let yourself actually taste it.
7. Rest, then ask. Having come this far, you’re likely a little more peaceful inside. Stay here a moment longer than feels necessary. This is the pleasure part: you’re not doing this to accomplish anything, you’re doing it to be present to your own life. And then, from this peaceful place, you might ask: what is my next faithful step? Trust whatever rises, without a charge of fear or urgency. That steady knowing is worth listening to. This is your intuition.
You cannot always see the whole road. But you can come back to this moment, the one place where God is already meeting you, and from here you can find the next place to stand.
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