A STRANGER IN THE FIELD

There's a stranger in the field. Why is he there? Simple. To lead you in the way that leads to pain, rejection, abandonment, and heartache. To direct us to the crucible of excruciation. How ironic. How surprising. How unexpected. How shocking. But perhaps, just perhaps, we should say how providential. There's a stranger in the field, and he's there on purpose, a mysterious purpose found only in the heart of God. There's a stranger in the field. What is his name? From whence does he come? His name is Providence and he comes from God.

Writing to friends enduring difficulty, John Newton once offered these words: "Accept this hasty line as a token of my sympathy. May the Lord bless you both. And may we all so weep as those who expect to have all their tears wiped away." Newton's compassionate counsel gently pulls back the curtain on a reality we all know intimately—that life will inevitably present us with reasons for weeping. This week, a week that simultaneously ushered in a school shooting in Colorado, the assassination of Charlie Kirk before a watching world, and the depraved celebration of his death during the aftermath, gives plenty of reason for weeping. Yet Newton's words are poignant in that they remind us of one who cares very much about the tears we shed, and his promise is a future where the precious water of broken hearts will flow nevermore. Living Hope.

The story of Joseph is a clarifying account that gives perspective when the storm of emotion is found reverberating in the heart of God-conscious believers facing the contrasting ugliness of evil. It provides each of us with a masterclass in the school of understanding. The bulk of Joseph's life is recounted in Genesis 37-50, and it provides a profound lens through which to examine this tension between present darkness and ultimate hope. Joseph's journey takes him from the pasture to the pit, from the pit to the palace, from the palace to prison, and from the prison to becoming a preserver of life. It was a path riddled with pain, suffering, bewilderment, and abandonment, but it didn't end there. For suffering and death never get the final word in the lives of those whose faith is in the one who killed death.

Darkness Wins...Sometimes...But Not Ultimately

Joseph died. It happened while he was in Egypt. He was 110 years old, and he wasn't in the land of promise that represented home and heritage. Defeat. He never returned to the land of his father after he was sold as a slave. In his lifetime, he never saw the fulfillment of the promise that began with Abraham, was passed down to Isaac, and then given to his father. Again and again, Joseph found himself on the receiving end of sorrow-inducing suffering. Sometimes darkness wins. But not ultimately. Joseph's final words reveal an important perspective: "God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here" (Genesis 50:25). This was Joseph's dying request, demonstrating an understanding that temporary defeats often pave the way to eternal victories in God's economy. Indeed, darkness may have a loud voice that silences those in its wake. But its voice is not final.

His story forces us to stare into the darkness and acknowledge its existence. Evil is real. The enemy is not yet eradicated. Darkness and all the heart-crushing pain it hides are a normal feature in a world still bearing the marks of the Serpent's deceit. Yet, Joseph's story simultaneously refuses to let us conclude that such victories are final or meaningless. And still, suffering, the smothering ambush of darkness, injustice, and inexplicable violence permeates this world and a first step towards clarity is looking at it, acknowledging it, and then seeking God's wisdom to understand it.

Five Wounds of a Broken World

Joseph's journey through the crucible reveals something both uncomfortable and familiar—that suffering comes packaged in distinct forms, each carrying its own particular sting. His story illuminates five wounds that continue to pierce human hearts in every generation, wounds that many of us carry even now.

The first wound carved into Joseph's soul was that of hateful rejection. It began, as such wounds often do, in the place where love should have been most secure—among family. Joseph's brothers harbored contempt that had been festering like an infection, fed by their father's favoritism and Joseph's youthful naivety. When the moment came, their hatred culminated in a plot that would separate Joseph from his family for twenty-two years. The text reveals the depth of their callousness with a detail that should shock us: after stripping their brother and throwing him into a pit, "they sat down to eat."

This represents what we might call "the odor of rejection"—not merely the initial harm, but the indifference that follows like a noxious vapor. It's the ability of those who wound us to move on as though nothing happened, to return to normal life while we remain bleeding in the pit they've thrown us into. Later, in Genesis 42:21, we discover that Joseph had "begged them" while they "saw the distress of his soul." Picture it: the brothers looked directly into their young brother's terrified, pleading eyes and chose cruelty anyway. This reveals a fundamental truth about human evil—rejection doesn't content itself with inflicting pain; it speaks four devastating words to its victims: "You are not enough."

Few things are more infuriating, perplexing, and disillusioning in our present day than the utter disdain for life. Like a mob of demon-drunk henchmen, our present culture is saturated with those who no longer blush, no longer weep, no longer understand the preciousness of life, and no longer possess the ability to distinguish between those things worthy of celebrating and those things worthy of grieving. Educational institutions, social media swamplands, and corporations throughout the US are filled with those who walk in apathy at best and in celebratory sinfulness at worst.

The second wound came wrapped in righteousness itself. In Potiphar's house, Joseph's moral fiber became the very thread that would unravel his life. After repeatedly refusing his master's wife's advances, after calling her propositions what they were—"this great wickedness" and "sin against God"—Joseph found himself the target of vicious slander. The woman scorned became the woman who lied, and Joseph discovered a bitter truth that echoes through the corridors of history: sometimes doing the right thing places a target on our backs. Righteousness often provokes rather than prevents attack. Before his moment of martyrdom, Charlie Kirk made the following statement on one of his many social platforms: "Good men must die, but death can't kill their names." Kirk merely applied the teaching that he most often represented, namely, the teaching of Christ. For it was Christ who first said, "Remember the word that I said to you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you." (John 15:20)

The third wound followed with devastating swiftness. Joseph had spent approximately eleven years building a successful life in Potiphar's household, rising to become overseer of everything, his fingerprints on every aspect of the operation. Then, through the course of a single evening, it all came crashing down. Prison replaced prosperity, condemnation replaced commendation. The text emphasizes that "the LORD was with Joseph, and he became a successful man," making his sudden fall all the more jarring. This is the wound of significant loss—when everything you've built, everything you've worked for, everything that made life feel stable and meaningful vanishes like smoke. It can happen in a moment. On a day that seems, feels, smells, and looks like any other day, it can happen. Vanished. Gone. Snuffed out. Darkness winning.

In prison, Joseph tasted the fourth wound: being utterly forgotten. He had interpreted dreams accurately, had helped the cupbearer understand his restoration was coming, had vulnerably asked to be remembered. The cupbearer walked free, returned to his position, resumed his life—and completely forgot the man who had helped him understand his future. The text's stark conclusion captures a particularly devastating form of suffering: "Yet the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him." Loneliness, as one writer observed, is "a wound without blood, a fatal injury with no weapon in sight." It's the ache of being overlooked, of fading from memory, of discovering that your impact on others was so slight they moved on without a backward glance.

The fifth wound stretched like a slow bleed across two full years between Genesis 40:23 and 41:1. Joseph waited 730 days to be remembered, 17,520 hours for someone to show up, over a million minutes for the silence to break. This is the wound of delayed longings, the agony of hope deferred that makes the heart sick. The New England preacher Phillips Brooks once paced his floor like a caged lion, explaining to a friend: "The trouble is, I'm in a hurry, but God isn't." Some know this wound intimately—waiting month after month to conceive, year after year for reconciliation, decade after decade for justice, a lifetime for healing that never comes.

Darkness is real. Evil exists. Suffering is common. Sometimes darkness wins. It needs to be acknowledged. It needs to be looked at. We need not deny it. Neither should we despair. For darkness never gets the last word in the lives of those who belong to the Lord of light.

The Stranger's Mysterious Purpose

The pivotal moment that sets Joseph's suffering in motion appears in Genesis 37:15: "And a man found him wandering in the fields." This unnamed stranger knew exactly where Joseph's brothers had gone and provided the precise information needed to send Joseph directly into the trap that would begin his decades of hardship.

Who was this man? Scripture doesn't tell us. He could have been anyone, could have said anything, could have sent Joseph in any direction. Instead, he provided the instrumental information necessary to get Joseph exactly to the place where his long journey of suffering would begin. Martin Luther observed, "In such danger we see the deepest silence of God and the angels... But behold how much good God draws forth from this."

This stranger represents the mystery we grapple with whenever we face inexplicable suffering. Sometimes God allows His people to walk into darkness for purposes we cannot immediately see. The stranger's directions weren't malicious—they were accurate. He wasn't deceiving Joseph—he was providing helpful information. Yet this encounter set in motion a chain of events that would bring tremendous pain.

The stranger in the field embodies the theological tension at the heart of providence: God's sovereign orchestration of events includes, rather than excludes, human suffering. This doesn't make God the author of evil, but it does mean that evil serves purposes beyond itself, purposes that often remain hidden until long after the suffering has passed.

The Hidden Presence in the Pain

Throughout Joseph's ordeal, the repeated refrain "the LORD was with him" appears four times in Genesis 39 alone. Acts 7:9 summarizes his entire experience: "God was with him." This presence didn't eliminate suffering but sustained Joseph through it. God's "withness" doesn't guarantee the absence of pain but promises sustenance within it.

This presence manifests not in miraculous deliverances but in quiet providence—Joseph succeeds in Potiphar's house, he gains favor in prison, he interprets dreams accurately. The same divine hand that guided the stranger's directions continues to guide every subsequent development, even when that guidance leads through valleys rather than around them.

The Pattern of Providence

The pattern of God's working becomes clear only in retrospect. Joseph could have wandered aimlessly looking for his brothers, but the stranger in the field knew exactly where they were. Joseph could have died in the pit, but traders "happened" to pass by. He could have remained a slave, but false accusations led to prison. He could have remained a prisoner, but Pharaoh needed dreams interpreted.

Each apparent setback positioned Joseph for the next phase of God's plan. When Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers in Genesis 45, he provides the interpretive key: "God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth... So it was not you who sent me here, but God" (45:7-8). Later, in Genesis 50:20, he offers the complete theological framework: "As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive."

This represents the bookend to the stranger in the field. What began with a mysterious encounter that led to suffering culminates with the revelation that God orchestrated it all for salvation. The stranger's directions, the brothers' hatred, Potiphar's wife's lies, the cupbearer's forgetfulness—all served the divine purpose of positioning Joseph to save Egypt and the surrounding peoples from famine. There's a stranger in the field. He's there on purpose, and with purpose. Though it's truth that his direction may lead from a pasture to a pit, without him, Joseph never sees the palace, never interprets the dreams, and consequently, would have never been able to preserve the lives of those from whom the Savior himself would someday come.

Hope Anchored in Eternity

Joseph's final act, recorded in Hebrews 11:22, demonstrates his ultimate perspective: "By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones." Four hundred years before Moses, two centuries before his family even entered slavery, Joseph anticipated their liberation and demanded that his bones be carried to the promised land.

This dying request reveals a man whose hope transcended his circumstances. Joseph could have had a magnificent tomb in Egypt, where future generations would honor the man who saved their nation from starvation. Instead, he chose to anchor his legacy in God's promises rather than human gratitude. His living hope, rooted in God's character, looked beyond present realities to eternal purposes.

Our Own Strangers in the Field

There's a stranger in the field. His presence in Joseph's life serves as more than historical narrative—it provides a theological framework for understanding our own encounters with inexplicable suffering, darkness unmasked, and evil on the stage. Every single despairing diagnosis, pain-inducing betrayal, gut-wrenching loss, sharp rejection and trophy of evil is subject to God's sovereign oversight. He doesn't cause the evil, doesn't usher in the darkness and takes no joy in the suffering of his people, but His stranger in the field is there to point the way to a painful path that often leads to astonishing providence. There he is, the stranger in the field, the instrument of providential encounters that set us on paths we would never choose but that serves purposes we cannot yet see.

This doesn't mean we should passively accept all suffering or fail to resist evil when possible. Joseph himself actively resisted Potiphar's wife's advances, called their sin what it was, and fled rather than compromise. Even when showing grace to his brothers years later, he never minimized their actions: "you meant evil against me." The pattern is clear: call evil what it is, evil, while trusting God's sovereignty over the ultimate outcome.

Joseph's example teaches us to endure what we cannot righteously change while resisting what we can righteously oppose. Biblical figures like Daniel, Esther, and the Hebrew midwives demonstrate that trusting God's sovereignty doesn't require passivity in the face of preventable evil.

The Cross as Ultimate Stranger

The theology of the stranger in the field finds its ultimate expression in the cross of Christ. There, the greatest evil—the murder of the Son of God—served the greatest good—the salvation of sinners. As Sinclair Ferguson observes, "The promise that His Son would suffer in our place was surely the hardest promise the Father ever made. And He kept it."

The cross proves that all of God's promises can be trusted precisely because He already kept the most difficult one. When darkness seems to win battles in our lives and in the world around us, we remember that God has already won the war that matters most. The One who orchestrated redemption through the ultimate stranger in the field—a Roman cross on a Judean hill—can be trusted to work all things together for good for those who love Him.

The stranger in the field was no accident. That mysterious encounter was part of God's greater plan, just as our own strangers in the field—whether they come as diagnoses, betrayals, losses, or rejections—fall within the scope of divine sovereignty. What enemies mean for evil, both the seen and unseen enemies, God uses for good. Though the good may not appear for decades or may not be fully revealed until eternity.

When life hits hard and darkness seems to win, we remember Joseph's story. We acknowledge the reality of suffering without denying the greater reality of providence. We weep as those who expect to have all tears wiped away. We endure present darkness while trusting in future light. We remember that pits are not permanent addresses, prisons are not final destinations, and silence will not last forever.

There's a stranger in the field. He reminds us on this day, and in this hour that God's providence operates even in our suffering and in the suffering of our brothers and sisters, perhaps especially in our suffering, for purposes greater than we can imagine. In a world where darkness often wins battles, this truth anchors our hope: God wins the war. He gets the last word. Trust Him!

God only knows the fruitful harvest He will bring forth from a ground watered by the blood of men like Charlie Kirk and all the martyrs who came before him and will come after him. Ground first saturated by the blood of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ Himself.

Five Essential Takeaways for This Hour

1. Evil's victory is real but never final. Charlie Kirk's assassination represents darkness winning a battle, but it cannot win the war. When righteous voices are silenced by violence, God raises up others to carry the message forward. The blood of martyrs becomes the seed of the church, and death cannot kill their names or their influence.

2. Your suffering has a mysterious purpose beyond your understanding. Like Joseph's stranger in the field, the painful circumstances you face—including grief over senseless tragedies—are not outside God's sovereign control. He doesn't cause evil, but He uses it for purposes that may not be revealed for years or even until eternity.

3. Righteousness often provokes persecution, not prevents it. Those who stand boldly for biblical truth, like Charlie Kirk, will face increasingly vicious attacks. This isn't a sign of failure but of faithfulness. Christ promised His followers would be persecuted just as He was—wearing such opposition as a badge of honor rather than shame.

4. God's presence sustains through suffering, not around it. The LORD was with Joseph in the pit, in prison, and in the palace. God's "withness" doesn't eliminate pain but provides strength to endure it. He walks with grieving families, sustains broken hearts, and gives grace for each moment of sorrow.

5. Your response to darkness determines its ultimate power over you. Joseph chose to trust God's providence despite decades of suffering, ultimately becoming a preserver of life rather than a victim of circumstance. You can choose to let tragedy embitter you or to trust that God will work even the worst evil for purposes of redemption, just as He did at the cross.