I nearly did. It wasn’t milk…but when I came home from a grueling day at work and found out that two things had spilled that I had attachment and energy and cost and effort into…I nearly cried. A grown up girl like me….I wanted to cry, to stop all the things needed of me, to shout ‘this was important to ME!’ and hide for a couple of hours. I tell people that the difference between a child and an adult is that adults know not to not throw the fit they want to, when they want to. So I finished up my nightly responsibilities and went to bed almost on time.
The whole week hadn’t gone great…this was just the icing on the proverbial cupcake (a mud-one at that). I don’t know many people who have a great feeling about how life is right now…I am certain that God is Sovereign and my husband loves me but the rest of my life seems riddled with uncertainty. How does that song go? “On Christ the Solid Rock I stand/all other ground is sinking sand.” I hear it in so many other people, too. But…this was what finally made me want to cry. And while I was going on with my nightly ‘needed’ routine…and feeling very picked on…my thoughts oddly enough turned to the story I’d been most recently studying, and that was of the young Joseph.
Now this story takes place in the first book of the Bible…Genesis 37. Joseph is one of Jacob’s 12 children, a favored one because his mother was the favorite of his father’s wives. (Read the story if you’re not remembering it). But the part that was coming to mind was after Joseph had been sent to check on his brothers, who hated him and sold him to a group of slave traders. And in an instant….Joseph’s life was changed. “With a trembling heart he looked forward to the future. What a change in situation–from the tenderly cherished to the despised and helpless slave!” (Patriarchs and Prophets ch Joseph in Egypt). And author says
For a time Joseph gave himself up to uncontrolled grief and terror.
Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets p 213
No I am in no way comparing my ‘spilled milk’ with Joseph’s drastic life changes. (Though I may have been acting like it.) I cannot fathom being Joseph at this point. I tremble as a parent, thinking of this being my child. No comparison, none whatsoever.
But what Joseph did at the next moment is what I wanted to touch on…and is a theme seen throughout the Bible. A person is faced with a trial and they falter….Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Solomon, Elijah, Elisha, Esther, Simon Peter to name just a few. The response the Almighty has to Elijah the fiery prophet is classic and one of my favorites….being chased by a mad queen after he’d singlehandedly faced and then had killed her prophets of Baal, he runs scared three days straight and then falls asleep. When he wakes up, an angel is there with food and says ‘eat, the journey is too long.’ In the case of Joseph “Then his thoughts turned to his father’s God…. He then and there gave himself fully to the Lord, and he prayed that the Keeper of Israel would be with him in the land of his exile.” (P&P 214)
His soul thrilled with the high resolve to prove himself true to God–under all circumstances to act as became a subject of the King of heaven. He would serve the Lord with undivided heart; he would meet the trials of his lot with fortitude and perform every duty with fidelity.
Ellen G. White P&P p 214
I love this. First, God loves us, we have to believe He will care for us. Second, in whatever this next life-altering change may be, God expects us to act as as subject of the King of Heaven. Look at Joseph…look at Daniel. Both exile captives, both making decisions to follow their upbringing at all costs but keeping a Godly way about himself. Both went through extreme trials but remained true and were ultimately given such responsibility as to save nations.
Believe it or not…I’m still sad about my ‘spilled milk.’ But when I set out to handle the spills after I’d found them, I started to find inexplicable ways that possibly the ways I’d been doing things before the spill was not ideal…and a change was in my best interest. And if all the giants of the Bible could learn from their ‘spilled milk’ (and even cry over it a little) and still be used by God, then there is little reason to think that I couldn’t do so as well.
Despite more trials, Joseph remained true to the God of his father Jacob–and God ultimately pulled him out of the ‘pit’ himself and placed him, humbled, as the second-in-command of the greatest nation in the world at that time. I need to remember that the lessons from my ‘spilled milk’ are commonly so that I am humbled and ready to take on the next challenge God has in store for me.
Sop up the milk….straighten your shoulders….and let God lead you through the trials before you. I don’t know for certain what is ahead, but I trust God to lead me like he lead Joseph. May I only be as faithful.
