Why Is All This Happening To Me?

The photographer for a national magazine was assigned to get photos of a great forest fire. Smoke at the scene hampered him and he asked his home office to hire a plane. Arrangements were made and he was told to go at once to a nearby airport, where the plane would be waiting. When he arrived at the airport, a plane was warming up near the runway. He jumped in with his equipment and yelled, “Let’s go! Let’s go!” The pilot swung the plane into the wind and they soon were in the air.

“Fly over the north side of the fire,” yelled the photographer, “and make three or four low level passes.”

“Why?” asked the pilot.

“Because I’m going to take pictures,” cried the photographer. “I’m a photographer and photographers take pictures!”

After a pause the pilot said, “You mean you’re not the instructor?”

Ever feel like someone was out to get you, or that absolutely nothing was going the way you thought it would? I don’t know who to feel sorrier for in the story above, the photographer or the student pilot! We all have times like that in our life. Wrong things ordered, wrong things sent, missed flights, overbooked flights, mistreatment at the license branch, incorrect medications given…the list of frustrations can go on and on. We look at the situation and say, “I can’t believe this is happening to me!”

When we meet Joseph in Genesis 37 we almost immediately see this poor teenager in trouble. It isn’t very long in the story until he’s sold by his brothers because of their intense hatred for him. I wonder if, while in prison, he thought about his dreams where his family bowed down to him. Did he ever wonder, “Lord, what about that? How is that going to be fulfilled? Did I read into that one?”

As I studied that passage this morning I read this comment written in the margin of my Bible: Even when people are at their worst, God is working out His plan. Whatever seeming blunders are going on in our lives right now, God is still working out His will for you and me. We can’t let ourselves wonder if He missed this one. He is sovereign. He is at work and He is even using the situation that you’re in right now (even if it’s due to another person’s mistake) to accomplish His purposes in your life.

Where was God when Joseph was imprisoned? The same place He is right now…He’s right here. Let that encourage your heart to keep flying!

With love,