When Everything Goes Wrong

There is a question that rises up almost involuntarily when life begins to unravel. When the famine hits, when the family is in disarray, when the road ahead leads somewhere you never expected and never wanted to go -- the question surfaces with an almost desperate urgency: What is this all for?

It is not a question born of weak faith. In many ways, it is one of the most honest prayers a person can pray. And if you trace the story of Jacob's family arriving in Egypt in Genesis 47, you will find that this question is woven into every step they take.

Consider what the sons of Jacob had been through. Famine had stripped the land bare. Family relationships had fractured under the weight of deception and regret. The long-lost brother they had wronged was now the one holding the keys to their survival. And the answer to their crisis was not a triumphant return to prosperity -- it was a one-way journey into a foreign land, to live among people who considered them an abomination.

This was not a mountaintop moment. This was survival mode. And yet, quietly and deliberately, God was arranging things in ways none of them could fully see.

The prophet Habakkuk captured this tension with remarkable honesty. In Habakkuk 3:17-18, he describes a scene of total agricultural collapse -- no blossoms, no fruit, no flocks, no harvest -- and then declares that he will still rejoice in God. That is not a passive resignation. That is a fierce, deliberate act of trust when the evidence for trust seems to have disappeared entirely.

When Jacob's family arrived in Egypt, they were given land in Goshen. And here is where the story quietly becomes extraordinary. Goshen was not the lush, fertile farmland that made Egypt famous. It sat on the dry eastern side of the Nile, not ideal for crops but perfectly suited for grazing livestock.

To the natural eye, it might have looked like the lesser portion. But God was not giving them lesser -- He was giving them exactly what they needed, positioned precisely where He intended them to be.

We do this with God constantly. We look at what He has placed before us and compare it to what someone else has received, and we wonder if we drew the short straw. But God's provision is rarely what we would have chosen for ourselves, and it is almost always more purposeful than we initially recognize.

The truth embedded in the Goshen assignment is this: God does not make mistakes in His placement of His people.

When five of the brothers stood before Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world, they did something remarkably simple. They told the truth. They said exactly what Joseph had instructed them to say -- that they were shepherds, as their fathers before them had been, and that they needed a place to graze their flocks.

They did not dress it up. They did not hide what they were. In a culture where shepherds were considered beneath Egyptian society, they stood before Pharaoh and said plainly: this is who we are.

Paul wrote to the church in Corinth about this same posture, describing believers as fools in the eyes of the world, weak, poorly dressed, reviled -- and yet responding to that scorn with blessing rather than bitterness (1 Corinthians 4:10). There is something deeply liberating about refusing to be ashamed of who you are before God, even when the world has assigned you a lesser value.

And here is what honesty before power produced: Pharaoh, rather than dismissing these shepherds, recognized an opportunity. He had just acquired enormous amounts of livestock through the famine economy, and he had no one to care for it. These men, the very people Egypt considered an abomination, were exactly what Pharaoh needed. God had placed them there for such a time as this.

The book of Esther asks the same question of its central character in Esther 4:14 -- whether she had come to her position for precisely the moment of crisis she was facing. It is a question worth sitting with: Is God placing me here, in this difficulty, in this unexpected season, for a reason I cannot yet see?

When Jacob himself stood before Pharaoh, he did something unexpected. He blessed him. And then, after Pharaoh asked about his age and Jacob answered with the honest weight of his 130 years -- describing them as few and difficult -- he blessed Pharaoh again on his way out.

Pharaoh, who was considered a god among his own people, received a blessing from an elderly shepherd whose people were considered beneath Egyptian society. And yet the walls came down. Pharaoh, who had addressed the brothers through Joseph, now spoke directly to Jacob. Something about the blessing broke through.

Proverbs 16:31 describes gray hair as a crown of glory, gained through a righteous life. Jacob's years were marked by struggle, loss, and the slow, sometimes painful work of faith. But those years carried a weight that Pharaoh could not ignore. There is something that a life genuinely lived before God communicates that no amount of youth or status can replicate.

By the end of these twelve verses, the family is settled. They have land, provision, and purpose. What looked like disaster -- famine, displacement, humiliation -- had become the very pathway through which God positioned His people exactly where they needed to be.
The question "what is this all for?" does not always receive an immediate answer. But the story of Jacob's family arriving in Goshen is a reminder that God is working in the background of every difficult chapter, arranging things with a precision and care that only becomes visible in hindsight.

When nothing seems to be going right, the invitation is not to have all the answers. It is simply to trust the One who does -- and to bless others along the way.

Choose one or two of the following to discuss as a group or commit to individually before your next meeting.

This Week, Consider:

• Identify one relationship in your life, either with someone older or someone younger in faith or age, that you have been neglecting. Reach out and schedule time together with no agenda other than to listen and learn.
• Think of one area of your life where you have been less than honest about who you are or what you need. Prayerfully consider one person with whom you could practice that honesty this week.
• Write down the name of one person in your life who does not share your faith. Commit to praying for one specific way you can bless them this week, not in order to start a conversation about faith, but simply because God has placed them in your life.
• Spend time this week reflecting on a current difficult season. Ask God directly: "Why have you placed me here, and for whom?" Write down what comes to mind and bring it back to share with the group next time.
• If your church has older members you have never spoken to, introduce yourself to one of them this Sunday. Ask them one question about their life and then simply listen.