All of us, as Christians, have fluctuating emotional moments. We confess that there are times when our emotions are all over the place. If you don’t learn to steward these emotional fluctuations, you can frustrate progress. If you don’t learn to steward them, you’ll mess around and say the wrong thing, like “I didn’t mean what I said.” You meant it when you said it. You may regret that you said it, but now you are messing around with the fallout of an emotional moment.
Joseph is crying and weeping, but not because it is a purging of emotions; it is the delivering of a message. This text teaches that when life and human exchanges and lived circumstances force these fluctuating emotional moments—moments where your emotions are sending you all over the place and causing these tough, constructive thoughts and expressions—you must stop being a victim to your fluctuations.
Joseph was strong in intent, focused and passionate in purpose, in love with God, grateful for all God had done. Be like Joseph, making the best out of bad situations, learning how to thrive in tough places, letting your gifts make room for you. Never let life knock you so low that it makes you miss the invitation to prove to the world that you live with a conviction that all things work together for good for those who love God and who are called according to His purpose.
Joseph is not having something pulled from him. He’s having something communicated to him. His tears are delivering a message. And he needed this message because he has lived with detachment for two decades.
These moments in life that hurt us, scar us, inflame us, and anger us, these moments that fatigue us and make us want to quit and walk away: don’t let your response to them steal the power that God gives you to interpret your emotions.
If you have found yourself in Jesus Christ, then no matter what you go through, you ought to have the capacity to tap in so that tears become joy.