Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more.
Genesis 37:5
Being the younger brother had many disadvantages. One significant one was that you were handed down clothes. While the older sibling got fresh digs, I got to dig through his piles for new rags. What complicated matters slightly more in my life was my brother was built like a 2×2 and a I was built more like the tree it came from. In a word: round.
So his slim, long legged jeans didn’t fit my chunky, borderline husky frame. So Gran with her JCPenney employee discount made sure I was well outfitted in my pinstripe Levi jeans for school. She made sure I was well dressed.
Joseph found himself not in the hand me downs of his brothers. Not clothed in the sons Leah hand me downs. Nor in Bilpah or Zilpah kids. Baby bro Ben was years younger. So his robes weren’t gonna work. So Joseph favored by his father was given an ornament robe. One we often call the “coat of many colors”.
For all my love for Joseph and the outcome of the man he would become, he was really just a punk kid. My older brother slapped that label on me when he crested the teenage years and I was a mere tween. I was lagging just a year behind. But his 13 months of longer life lent him the wisdom he leveraged over me. And in some ways Craig was right. I was just a punk kid. I was Joseph.
Joseph was clearly the favorite son of his father Israel, who himself was a mama’s boy. Joseph was the son of love. His brothers were children of convenience. Jacob, Joseph’s father, married for love with his mom Rachel. Rachel struggled to conceive until the Bible says the Lord opened her womb. Joseph’s very conception was the work of God. And God’s book tells us Jacob loved him more because he was born in his old age.
This sacred son of Jacob would lose his mom as a teen. Rachel would die giving birth to baby brother Ben. So surely, Israel out of his love for Rachel and loss of Joseph’s mom, favored the him more.
And here at 17, that PUNK Kid, just keeps on. Contextually, we find the passages proceeding that Joe’s delivers a bad report to daddy on his brothers while out tending sheep. Punk Kid that’s a tattle tell on his older brothers.
Then to ice the cake Joe dares to dream. He dreams God dreams. Dreams that don’t make sense to his older half brothers. I wonder if they were mad at the dreams. Or just mad that he dared to dream something other than tending sheep for their father.
His dreams declared that the Punk Kid becomes Prince over the lives family. The dreams depict a dependence on the favored son. And the anger of the 10 other brothers rises. If you know the story Joseph eventually becomes the savior of Israel (his father) and his 11 brothers. And in truth the promise God gave his great grand-father Abraham.
16 years later, after years of heartbreak, hurt and seemingly broken dreams, Joes is elevated to second in command in the world’s most powerful nation. The punk kid becomes protector and provider of those that sold him out.
Inside all of us is the punk kid God wants to make powerful players in his kingdom purposes. So to all the punk kids like me: Dare to dream God-sized dreams. Dare to overcome your haters. And lean into the circumstances that shape the punk into a person who changes the world.
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
