You Can’t Unscramble Eggs
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28 (NIV)
They say you can’t unscramble eggs, but I know a God who makes really good omelettes!
As humans, most of us are not terribly skilled at juggling the “eggs” that make up our lives. More often than not they end up splattered, and not infrequently all over our faces. As if our own incompetence at life were not enough, there are many others who come along to break our “eggs” for us – sometimes maliciously, but frequently just by trying to help.
One way or another, our “eggs” – our dreams, our relationships, our ambitions, our self-perceptions – end up in a scrambled mess. What could God possibly do with this lot?
A young man named Joseph dreamed that he would rule over his brothers. In foolishly sharing that dream, he destroyed his relationship with them. Ooops! there’s one shattered egg. They then sold him into slavery, which cut off both his relationship with his father and his personal freedom. A couple more shattered eggs! Even though he rose to prominence in the house of his new master, a vindictive act by the master’s wife landed Joseph in prison. So much for the dream of rulership! So much for his perception of himself as a leader! A couple more shattered eggs. A true dream interpretation for a fellow prisoner brought him the promise of release, but even that did not eventuate. Yet another shattered egg.
I wonder how many times Joseph sat on his prison bed, looking back over the tangled mess that his life seemed to have become, and wondering what God could possibly do with this lot.
What God did was use it. Even as Joseph was watching his eggs shattering around him, God was using it. God used Joseph’s big mouth to prompt his brothers to get rid of him. He used the slave traders to carry Joseph to Egypt, which is where He wanted him. He used Joseph’s service both to Potiphar and in the prison to build leadership in him. He used Potiphar’s wife to get Joseph into prison, where he would both grow to maturity and be in place to meet Pharoah’s cup-bearer, and to successfully interpret his dream. Finally, he used the forgetful cup-bearer to bring Joseph to Pharoah’s attention at exactly the right time. Had the cup-bearer remembered Joseph when he was first released from prison, Pharoah may indeed have released Joseph, but it would have been to anonymity, not to the second highest position in Egypt. Every one of Joseph’s broken eggs was an ingredient God used in bringing him to his destiny.
Do you have shattered, scrambled eggs all around you? Are they splattered all over your face? Let God’s Spirit whisper this verse to your heart. Those very broken eggs may be exactly the things that, behind the scenes and beyond your sight or imagination, God is already using to bring you to the place of your destiny in Him.
Father, thank You that even when I can’t see any possible way that even the slightest hint of good could come out of a situation, You are already there, already using the very things that seem broken and scrambled in my life, to bring me to the place where You want me to be. Help me to trust you in the darkness, that You have everything under control.
