Remember in the book of Genesis when Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery and Joseph wound up being a ruler in Egypt, second in command only to Pharaoh?
And remember there was a famine and Joseph’s brothers went to Egypt looking for food for their whole family?
And remember how after the brothers went back and forth, finally Joseph revealed who he was and told them to pack up everything they owned and bring their father and come live in the land of Goshen and he would feed them all?
As they were preparing to finally move their families to Egypt, this is what God said to Jacob:
“Fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again …” (Gen. 46:3–4).
Have you ever wondered why God couldn’t just make Israel a great nation right where they were? Why did they have to go through all this difficulty?
If they’re anything like me, they needed to go through a hardship to really appreciate who the Lord was to them and how he cared for them.
But knowing the hard time would be brutal, and knowing it would last 400 years and include many generations of Israelites, God promised to go down with them. He would stay there with them for all those years with all those generations, and then he promised to bring them up again.
Friend, he does the same for us. All through the Bible God tells us we will be afflicted in one way or another. It’s part of living in a fallen world. People will abuse and be hateful and drive recklessly. Bad things will happen and we will ask why and maybe not get an answer, or at least not the answer we want. Just because God allows something doesn’t mean he approves.
But he doesn’t just stand at the road to difficulty and wave goodbye. He doesn’t just send us on our way and hope for the best.
No, he goes with us. He stays with us. His heart is broken for us. He sees our affliction and hears our cries and he walks through them with us.
And then he brings us out again.
God said he would there make a great nation of Israel. It would happen there, in the dark, hard, brutal place. God’s best work—his refining work, his building-up work—happens in the valley.
Life may not go the way we plan and our circumstances may not look like we want them to look, but God is there with us, walking the hard road alongside us. He’s working good in us, while we are there.
And he will bring us up again, after we go there.