R.P. Nettelhorst's Blog, page 107

Baseball!

My middle daughter, who will be a senior in high school this year, had been looking for a job since she turned sixteen. The search, until recently, had not been successful—this despite the fact that she even knows the family that owns three Burger Kings in our area. They’d told her to apply. They told her they’d have a job for her. No such luck. She’d tried various shops at the local mall. She’d applied at restaurants. She’d applied at coffee shops. The results were always the same: nothing. She was becoming very discouraged.

During the school year, her attempts at locating a job lessened, but as summer arrived, she began beating the bushes harder and with more earnestness. But no matter what she tried, she was getting nowhere fast. She was becoming a poster child for the status of the American economy.

But finally, as May became June and spring became summer, success arrived. Not Burger King, not a boutique, and not a coffee shop. It was in a restaurant, and was essentially fast food—but in a unique environment. In Lancaster, California we have a single A minor league baseball team called the JetHawks. They are a farm club for the Houston Astros and, like any baseball stadium, they sell food: burgers, hotdogs, and the like. My daughter applied, and they hired her.

She gets to wear a team shirt and baseball cap. The shirt is about three sizes too big, but that’s all they had left. The hat fits fine, however. Her first day—well, evening—of work, she came home tired and she complained of being bored and a little disappointed. She had hoped that working in the kitchen meant that she’d be cooking food. Instead, she was mostly just microwaving stuff.

However, by her third day she had adapted to the new tasks and discovered that there was more to it than just standing next to a microwave. Now she sometimes cooks, sometimes runs about and delivers the product. Her enthusiasm for her tasks was a relief to me. By the end of her first week she was absolutely thrilled with her job. Her pleasure rose after she received her first paycheck—though she, like most new workers, found she wasn’t overjoyed of FICA and the other acronyms that took bits and pieces of her pay from her.

After working at the baseball stadium for a month, she discovered that as part of her pay she receives eight free tickets to the ball games each month. This made me happy.

A couple of weeks ago, I got to go out to the old ballgame. My wife has zero interest in baseball, but my oldest daughter, my middle daughter, her boyfriend and his parents, joined me there, using up six out of the eight tickets all at once. The leftovers she gave to her boyfriend’s brother, who plans on taking his girlfriend to a game at some later date. Next month, all the tickets will be for me to do with as I please. I look forward to seeing multiple games.

The JetHawks came in first place last year, and they are in first place again this year. JetHawks’ Stadium is notorious for the ease with which players can hit home runs. In fact, it is so unusual that it became the subject of an article in the Wall Street Journal last year.

Lancaster, California is the real “windy city.” Chicago has nothing on us. Our ever blowing breezes add a significant lift to baseballs after they leave the bat. Players who go on to the majors find themselves disappointed that their performance doesn’t match what they had gotten used to with the JetHawks.

The first five innings of the game it looked as if the Jet Hawks were going to have an easy time beating their opponents, the Modesto Nuts. As the JetHawks finished that inning they were ahead 7 to 1. But things began changing for the worst very quickly. By the time the JetHawks came back up to bat, they were still ahead—but the score had changed to 7 to 3.

The seventh and eighth innings were a route. I have rarely seen a team fall apart so quickly and so thoroughly. It was as if the players had switched uniforms. The JetHawks gave four runs in the seventh. In the eighth, they gave up five more. By the time the game ended, they not only had lost, but lost badly, 12 to 7. Talk about a reversal of fortune.

If I were superstitious, I would be leery about using the eight tickets my daughter has for me in August—or the eight more she’s giving me in September. This is starting to remind me of the Dodgers. In all my years of going to Dodger Stadium, I’ve seen them win a game only once. If that pattern holds with the JetHawks, they’ll be in last place in no time.

Random Thoughts

I don’t mean to whine and I’m not looking for sympathy or answers. I’m just mulling things over, getting them out of my head and onto paper, as it were. This is for my benefit and you’re just listening to my random thoughts, the spasmodic firings of the neurons. Over the last few months I’ve become increasingly stressed; the problem with stress is that it gets in the way of being able to focus, and without being able to focus, it becomes harder to get work done—since the sort of work I do is all in my head. If you dig ditches, or perform manual labor, how you feel isn’t quite as important as if you have to be creative. Being between contracts, with no imposed deadlines makes it that much harder to focus the mind. Deadlines are well named. Samuel Johnson commented, “”Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” That’s what deadlines do for a writer. But without them, the mind unravels.

What adds to the stress of course is how my mind starts flopping around like a fish tossed up on the side of a riverbank by a hungry bear. The more I want to focus, the more difficult it becomes.

And part of that is because of life. My youngest daughter is mentally ill and although her medication helps a great deal, she is largely unable to be unsupervised. Although she should be a junior in high school, instead she is at home on what is called independent study, which means she gets her work from her high school and then has to read and do her school work on her own. She simply is not capable of surviving in a normal classroom setting, not because she isn’t capable of doing the work, but because she is incapable of concentrating and actually doing it when she is surrounded by other kids (on top of the fact that she has no ability to recognize those kids that are good and those that want to take advantage of her; since the unsavory sorts see her as an easy mark, they give her attention—and she craves attention—and so because they initially smile and talk to her, they instantly become her “best friends”—which lasts very briefly, until they do something rotten to her; and then she falls apart and is devastated.)

So, anyhow, she works from home now (ever since two of her “friends” beat her up—the “friends” were expelled and prosecuted; since my daughter simply curled up into a ball and didn’t hit back, she didn’t get in any trouble).

So, I spend my days being interrupted frequently and have to help her quite a bit with her school work and other things.

Because I’m between contracts, there is less money. Thankfully my wife is a public school teacher and so our income from that is steady, relatively speaking. Because of the state’s budget problems, her income has actually been cut over the last four years by nearly ten percent—and our cost of health insurance has skyrocketed. Since someone has to stay home with my youngest daughter, I’m mostly precluded from finding any other work on top of my writing.

Meanwhile my oldest daughter is in college and this year has transferred back east. So there are the added expenses of that. And about five years ago my wife finished her master’s degree; she wanted the added education and it held the advantage of moving her up on the pay schedule for her job. But right after she finished, the budget cuts happened so rather than seeing her salary go up, it simply went down slightly slower than it otherwise would have. So we increased our expenses (thanks to her student loans) without the anticipated increase in her income.

So, stress. Regular interruptions. More stress.

But somehow I still manage to write. I find I can’t not write. But it has been much harder lately. Somehow I am able to write a weekly newspaper column, a daily posting to my blog, and still write a short story every two or three weeks and I’m plugging along on three different novels; plus I’ve gotten involved in indie publishing, so I now have 18 ebooks up at Amazon available for the Kindle. I’m not making a fortune, but they do bring in some money—more than they were just sitting on my hard drive.

I also periodically do some consulting for an online news site and see myself quoted extensively there and continue to hope that my name will be increasingly noticed—and that it might translate into more work and more book sales.

But it remains a struggle and I’m tired. A vacation would be nice, except that all these things would still be there and still be hanging on my mind; how can I get a vacation from my stress when it is all in my head? No matter where I go, my head tends to come with me. There’s no way to get away from it.

So I just keep on keeping on and find comfort and joy in small things and work to keep things in perspective.

Paul faced prison, flogging, shipwreck and endless trouble. It wasn’t because God was mad at him. In fact, he was doing exactly what God wanted him to do–and eventually it killed him.

Paul wrote:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:4-9)

So, Paul learned how to handle the stress and how to keep things in perspective. So I’m learning now, too.

Spheres

My parents have told me that when I was very young I was enamored of balls. They even have photographic evidence of this strange fact. I can’t say that I really recall ever having such an attachment to spheres, but I have no reason to disbelieve them. They tell me I had a fondness for peas because they were, according to me, balls—and I would roll them around on my plate and play with them. I don’t think I much cared for eating them, but rolling them didn’t bother my tongue.

Since then, I’ve grown to enjoy eating peas—especially if they are split and in a soup—and have little interest in their ability to roll about on my plate.

Nevertheless, as I sit here in front of my computer, I can’t help but notice that I have three balls sitting on my desk: of the sort that used to be called super balls. I recall when super balls first appeared. Back when I was in third grade, a classmate arrived with an odd dark gray ball: it was hard and did not at all feel like any ball I’d ever seen or touched to that point. And when he threw it on the ground, it bounced unlike any ball I’d ever seen, flying up above the school roof.

Later, I noticed television advertisements for them. They were manufactured by the same company that made Frisbees: Wham-O. The rubber compound of which the super ball is made was invented by a chemist named Norman Stingley in 1964. He first offered his rubbery concoction to his employer, the Bettis Rubber company, but they turned him down because his compound was, as yet, not very durable. But the Wham-O toy company recognized its potential and quickly improved its durability. By the end of 1965 the Wham-O company had sold more than six million super balls. As time went by, the balls began appearing in other sizes and colors and the price dropped. Eventually other manufacturers began making similar bouncers.

The first super ball I ever owned was about the size of a large marble. I had quite a bit of fun with it, despite the fact that it was really quite useless for playing jacks. Something that I and my classmates, regardless of gender, had developed quite a fondness for by that time. To play jacks, we used a small ball that was red and rather soft; it didn’t bounce unusually high nor twitch about in the rather uncontrollable fashion of the super ball.

As I recall, I got very good at playing jacks. I was able to scoop them up, first one at a time, then two, and so on until in one scoop, I could snag the whole pile on the last bounce. I managed to get competent at it whether we played with the normal, small metal jacks or with the larger, plastic kind.

Another form of ball that I remember from my childhood was the marble. My father introduced them to me and taught me how to shoot them. He gave me a bunch of that he’d had as a boy and taught me about aggies and steelies and cats eyes. I frequented the five and dime and acquired bags full. I even snagged some from peanut butter. For awhile, jars of Jiff peanut butter came with a clear plastic attachment on the lid filled with cats eye marbles.

Later balls in my life include the baseball or softball that my father and I would throw back and forth in the back yard. My dad was an exceptional fast pitch softball player and pitcher; he played on the Air Force team of whatever base he happened to be stationed at and he earned many, many trophies.

Meanwhile, I went on to play baseball in elementary school on school teams. I also remember multiple games of kickball with those large reddish balls that seemed to be ubiquitous in school. We also used them sometimes to play dodge ball.

Once I hit junior high, my only experience playing ball came in gym classes, and then it was always softball; they were afraid we’d hurt ourselves if we played with real baseballs. Of course, that didn’t keep them from letting us play dodge ball—and even wrestling and boxing. But of course neither of those latter two sports involved using balls at all.

My experience with basketball consists entirely of games of horse and I think I played tennis once in high school. Outside of school, especially when we traveled back to Ohio to visit my grandparents and other assorted relatives often meant games of croquet. I don’t remember much about croquet beyond what it was like to place one’s foot on one ball that was touching another ball, and then swinging my mallet to make that second ball scoot away like a scared rabbit.

Today, I’m left with only the three super balls on top of my desk. The only other balls I see are those being tossed around on professional ball fields. My middle daughter now works in the stadium kitchen of our local minor league baseball team—and she gets eight free tickets a month. That makes me pretty happy even if I don’t get to play with any of the balls myself.

Entanglements

When we read a book, watch a movie, or enjoy an episode of one of our favorite dramas on television, we expect conflict. Usually it will be a battle between good and evil, whether it is man against nature, philandering husband against faithful wife, a teenager’s dream that her parents don’t recognize, or cops against robbers. Sometimes it will be crusading do-gooders fighting “the man.” In all stories, we find villains raging against the virtuous.

But in real life, it isn’t always so black and white. Sometimes there are no good guys. Instead, we realize that it wouldn’t bother us if both sides lost.

I think the first time I fully grasped this sad possibility was back in the 1980s when Iraq and Iran went to war with one another. Iran, at the time, was notorious for what it had done to Americans during its “Islamic Revolution.” For four hundred forty-four days fifty-two Americans were held hostage. Clearly, the Iranians were “bad guys.”

On the other hand, Iraq was run by Sadaam Hussein, a dictator and thug. Clearly not a good guy, either. Moreover, I was close friends with a recently arrived Iraqi. He was a physicist who had worked in Iraq’s nuclear program before his arrest and expulsion by the Iraqi government. His crime? He had led Bible studies and prayer meetings. Being a Christian in Iraq was not particularly healthy.

So it was impossible to root for either participant in that war. Both sides were awful.

Today, when I look at the so-called “Arab Spring” and witness the downfall of various dictators across the Middle East, ranging from Khadafy in Libya to Mubarak in Egypt, my initial thought is to feel joy at the downfall of brutal thugs. But then, it quickly becomes obvious that those deposing the thugs are no better than the thugs themselves. Mubarak was replaced by the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist group who attempted to impose Islamic extremism on the Egyptian population: women were oppressed, the minority Christians were systematically persecuted, and anti-American and anti-Semitic attitudes remained dominant. A year later, the Egyptian military—after the largest protests in world history—deposed the Muslim Brotherhood, establishing a “transition” government. But Egypt remains gripped by dictatorship, oppression, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. The only change has been some shifting in who gets targeted for oppression. No matter how often you rearrange the deck chairs, it is still the Titanic.

In Syria, there’s a rising opposition against another brutal dictatorship. Unfortunately, those battling the dictator are dominated by Al-Qaida—the same people who brought us Osama Bin-Ladin and 911. And the same people who oppress women, hate Jews and Christians, and think stringing gay people from light poles is a fine idea.

Sometimes it is necessary to choose the “lesser of two evils.” But in these disruptive times in the Middle East, it seems impossible to find much—if any—difference between the evils. This brings to mind another cliché: “a pox on both their houses.”

Our founding fathers, particularly George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, warned us against foreign entanglements. Their words are sometimes used to argue for isolationism and against any and all involvement with foreign nations. But I don’t quite think that was their point. After all, Washington’s administration worked to make a treaty with Morocco in Africa (the first nation to recognize the independence of the United States) in an attempt to solve a problem with international piracy—while Thomas Jefferson waged economic war with Britain and consistently supported French interests against the English. Jefferson happily twisted the law so that the U.S. could make the Louisiana Purchase from a France run by Napoleon, effectively doubling the size of the United States. The Revolutionary war itself would have failed had it not been for Ben Franklin’s success in bringing the French into our conflict with Great Britain, and Jefferson later served as an ambassador in France shoring up our relations with them while the American Constitution was being drafted.

Rather, Washington and Jefferson, when they warned of alliances, were reminding us that there is great danger in getting too involved in conflicts not our own, so make certain it’s really worth it. At the time of their warnings, the United States was not the overwhelmingly dominant military power on the planet that it is today. We were weak and backward. Getting involved in the conflicts engulfing Europe in those days could have destroyed us.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century the various European conflicts burning the continent were clashes between various shades of evil, not between men in white hats and black hats. The French government—which had helped us in our Revolution—was corrupt and oppressive. The French people overthrew it, only to replace it with a dictatorship run by extremists who subsequently murdered tens of thousands with the guillotine. What had replaced King Louis the XVI was not better—any more than what later replaced the head-chopping extremists—the self-proclaimed Emperor and dictator Napoleon—was better.

The real world tends to just replace one scoundrel with another. Most of the time it is best to just sadly shake our heads and walk away, while wishing them all the best. We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but guardians only of our own. As badly as you feel when you hear your neighbors arguing, unless they set fire to the back yard or start shooting at you, it’s just not your problem.

Europa

Source SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration.

Oklahoma

I have lived in California for more than thirty years now. It is the longest I’ve ever lived in one state. When I was growing up, my father was in the Air Force (he made a career of it) and so we moved somewhat frequently. My earliest recollections are of New Mexico, where I went to kindergarten, first grade and second grade. A year in Ohio followed during my father’s first tour of duty in Vietnam.

When my father returned from the war he was stationed in Oklahoma. We lived in the flight path of Tinker Air Force Base. To this day I can recognize a B-52, C-141 or an F-4 Phantom just by hearing it fly overhead.

My recollections of Oklahoma are mostly positive. The back yard of our house butted up against a large parcel of rural landscape. There were enormous trees, a creek, a pond, open fields—and on the far side of the creek, more trees. It was a boy’s paradise: a place full of gullies in which to hide and build forts. My friends and I also smoothed out a section of overgrown weeds and grass and created a baseball diamond. We were not particularly skilled: we used a push lawnmower to cut the grass down and to create the baselines—that we measured by eyeball rather than with a tape measure. We created a pitcher’s mound by piling dirt up in the middle and we made bases out of scrap lumber.

Three trees stood against the fence separating the back yard from the wilderness, and it wasn’t long before I began building a tree house out of the same scrap lumber. We created a residence among the tangled limbs, with multiple levels. It’s a wonder that the tree remained standing. As I tramped about the wilderness I frequently stepped on nails, or brush up against some poison oak. I recall multiple tetanus shots, pink calamine lotion on my arms and legs, and scratching furiously.

A brick barbecue sat in the back yard that we never used for barbecuing. Instead, it became a place for my mom and me to put birdseed and breadcrumbs. We became avid bird watchers. The most amusing were the blue jays: they would stuff their beaks so full of breadcrumbs that they couldn’t close their mouths. Then they’d fly or hop to a corner of the yard and bury the breadcrumbs—apparently thinking that they could come back for them later. They never quite seemed to figure out that bread crumbs and holes in the ground didn’t mix.

When winter came, the snow fell thick and deep. Besides building snowmen, one year there was enough to build a sort of igloo. Later, it rained one evening, but by morning the temperature dropped below freezing. All the roads were coated with an inch or two of ice, as slick as an ice rink. It was not safe for driving and so my school bus did not come. I spent that morning running and sliding across the smooth surface of the streets, expecting to spend the day playing. No such luck. My mom soon announced that school had not been cancelled—so I had to walk to school.

Which turned out to be a waste of time. When I arrived, I discovered that hardly anyone had shown up. Within fifteen minutes of arriving (after a 45 minute hike in bitterly cold weather) the principal announced that school was cancelled after all and sent everyone home.

In Oklahoma I first got to go to see and hear a symphony in a large concert hall. Our whole school drove to downtown Oklahoma City in buses and filled an auditorium. I think that’s how I came to love classical music.

In Oklahoma I got to be a crossing guard at our school.

I got my first bicycle.

And I played baseball in an organized team. I’m not sure if it was little league or just something put together by the school or the city. I played second base and outfield my first and second years, both of which were winning seasons. After each game we won—which was nearly all of them—we got to go to Dairy Queen for ice cream. But the third year I played, I wound up on a losing team. They made me one of the pitchers and as I recall, the only games we won were the games I pitched.

In Oklahoma I was in both cub scouts and boy scouts. I managed to earn First Class and was inducted into the Order of the Arrow. Our troop went camping frequently. Once we even camped in cabins where I got to be a night watchman and during the day rode snowmobiles.

Looking back on it, my three years in Oklahoma seemed an endless, bright, happy time. They form the bulk of my childhood memories.

Night of the Living Dead

The Apocalypse grants hope in the middle of hard times. John’s Apocalypse, usually referred to as the Book of Revelation, is often misunderstood by modern readers who fail to comprehend it’s setting and don’t get the genre. The confusion of many modern readers is akin to the confusion of someone who goes to watch the horror movie, The Night of the Living Dead and then tries to interpret it as a romantic comedy. Revelation is an apocalypse, a form of literature created to encourage those facing persecution, who live in an oppressed, controlled society. It has, over the years, comforted Christians enslaved by Romans, hunted by Nazis, or put in the Gulags by Communists. For the original readers, they understood it as a message of hope, that the Romans who currently controlled the world, who attacked and denigrated the Christian faith, and who fed Christians to lions and worse, would ultimately be overthrown. The oppressor’s whip would be broken, the bars of the prison would shatter, and the kingdom of tyranny would be transformed into the kingdom of God. And of course, that’s what happened. The Roman Empire that had persecuted Christians and killed them, ultimately transformed itself and converted to become Christian itself. From a persecuted minority, the Christian faith became the religion of the greatest Empire the world had ever known. The evil empire had been destroyed, not be force of arms, as many might have imagined—but through the preaching of the Gospel. And it’s destruction was not physical, but spiritual: the enemy of Christians died when it became a friend of Christians instead.

Chased by Goodness

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths

for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk

through the darkest valley,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

Surely your goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD

forever. (Psalm 23:1–6, NIV)

Like a shepherd, God cares for his people. The famous Psalm gives us one of many pictures that the Bible paints for us of God in the hopes of helping us understand him. In the New Testament, God is described as a Father. Elsewhere, he’s been described as a husband. Jesus compares himself to a mother hen. And here, the Psalmist compares him to a shepherd, a common image for the agriculturally based society in which it was penned. The shepherd devoted himself to watching over the sheep, seeing to it that they were fed and watered and protected from foes. Through heat and cold, through bright sunny days and dark scary nights, the Shepherd was always there, never leaving the sheep, never letting them face any hardship by themselves.

A phrase near the poem is commonly translated, “Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.” The word translated “follow” is an interesting one, in that it has very negative connotations in the original Hebrew language in which the poem was written. It was used for “pursuit” as in a predator chasing after its prey or an army chasing an enemy. It was also used to describe persecution.

Thus, a powerful image is drawn by the poet, because he twists something negative into a positive, creating an unforgetible image of God’s people being chased by the ravenous rabid dogs of Goodness and Love. Are we going to let them catch us, or are we going to keep on running?

What’s the Point?

Elijah is overworked, stressed, and lonely.

His great victory over the prophets of Baal during the Contest of the Gods on Mt. Carmel had been followed not by further victory, but with rejection and the threat of death at the hands of the Queen of Israel, Jezebel. Having fled in terror from Jezebel’s death threat, Elijah wound up in the wilderness. Discouraged, worn out, and alone, he prayed that God would kill him. Instead, God sent an angel to feed him and saw to it that he got some needed rest. Then he got up and traveled on for another forty days. Finally, while he was hiding in a cave, God came to him and asked him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:9)

Elijah responded, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” (1 Kings 19:10)

For Elijah, not only had the work of being a prophet been hard and tiring, it also seemed to be worthless. In all his years of preaching, teaching and working at telling his countrymen about God, what had he managed to accomplish? As far as he could tell, absolutely nothing. In fact, as far as he could tell, things had actually gotten worse. Where before there had been worshipers of Yahweh, today they were all gone with him alone as the sole follower of Yahweh. What had it all been for? Why had he bothered? Hence, his desire that God would simply kill him now.

In the popular movie staring James Stuart, It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey comes to believe that he has wasted his life since he never achieved his heart’s ambition. Frustrated and bitter, he comes to the point of suicide and wishes that he’d never been born. He is rescued by a clumsy angel who shows him just what the world would be like had he, in fact, never been born: not a pretty picture.

We suffer myopia when it comes to ourselves and it is easy to underestimate the positive repercussions of any individual life.

Intended for Good

The friction that brothers and sisters experience with one another is described with the phrase, “sibling rivalry.” In the story about Joseph and his relationship with his ten older brothers (see Genesis 37-50), we discover a description of the problem in its most extreme, murderous form. In fact, Joseph’s brothers decide not to kill him only because their greed was greater than their hatred of him. They decided that selling him into slavery was preferable to killing him, since that way they got rid of both the annoying younger brother and they got some cash to spend on the party later to celebrate his departure.

Joseph’s experiences over the next two decades of his life were mostly awful. Sold to Potipher, an Egyptian official, he became the object of lust by the man’s wife. When he refused her advances, she falsely accused her of attempted rape. So he went from being a slave to being a prisoner in a dungeon.

There, he one day accurately interpreted the dreams of two of his cellmates: a baker and cupbearer of the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh. The baker wound up executed, just as his dream had predicted, but the cupbearer was restored to his favored position with the Pharaoh. Three years later, when Pharaoh had a dream that no one could interpret, the cupbearer remembered Joseph and told Pharaoh about him.

Joseph came before the king, successfully interpreted the dream as a prophesy of coming famine, and suggested preparations should be made, with someone put in charge of stockpiling foodstuffs. The Pharaoh was impressed enough by Joseph to make him the man in charge, and so Joseph, overnight, went from prisoner to the second most powerful man in Egypt.

When his brothers came looking for food a few years later, Joseph gave them a hard time, but eventually rescued them from their problem and brought both them and his father down to Egypt to live with him in splendor. After his father died, Joseph’s brothers became worried that Joseph might seek at last to bring vengeance upon them for how badly they had treated him. But Joseph, catching wind of their fears, reassured them by explaining, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” (Genesis 50:20-21)

The suffering of Joseph’s life had not been without purpose. Most of the time, people never see the reason for the suffering they experience. It arrives unexpectedly and seems entirely without purpose or reason, making people suspect that God is more like a mean kid pulling the legs off spiders so he can watch them squirm than a loving father.

For my wife and I, being unable to have children of our own was a devastating sorrow. But it led us to investigate foster care, something we would never have done had we not been childless. For the three little girls that wound up in our home, whom we ultimately adopted, it was the best possible outcome. They went from places of danger, drug exposure and neglect, to a loving and caring household. Their lives have turned out radically different than they otherwise might have. What seemed initially a bad thing for us turned out to be a blessing, and not just for us.

God is in the habit of perverting evil for good.