From the Pit to the Promise

This post is an adaptation ---- further reflections, perhaps, of a sermon I recently preached at my home church. You can watch the original version HERE if you'd wrather.

A ministry at my church made T-shirts that say From the Pit to the Palace. It’s a good T-shirt, really — the sort of thing you wear when you want to remind yourself that your life is headed somewhere good, that the story doesn’t end in the dark. But the trouble with T-shirts is they don’t tell you how long the road is between the pit and the palace. They can’t.

Joseph knew something about pits. He was seventeen, draped in a coat that marked him as beloved — a dreamer dreaming dreams too big to stay hidden. But some people — sometimes the people who ought to love you most — will toss you in a pit because they can’t stomach the dreams God stitched into you. So they stripped the coat off his back, threw him down a hole in the earth, and sat nearby eating lunch as if he’d never been their brother.

You and I know the pit, too — don’t we? There are pits dug by betrayal — the kind you can taste in the grit between your teeth. Pits dug by our own foolishness, too — sins that wrap themselves around your ankles like a rope and tug you down. Pits called addiction, regret, depression, bitterness. Some pits don’t look like pits at all — they look like a job that numbs you out, four walls that keep you from the wild world you once dreamed you’d run through barefoot, the whisper of God’s promise somewhere under your ribs.

It’s not if. It’s when.

Joseph was lifted from the pit, but not to freedom — to Potiphar’s house, a slave in a stranger’s land. The Bible says the Lord was with him — a sentence that glows gold on the page but must have tasted bitter in his mouth. He swept floors that shouldn’t have been his to sweep, bore burdens that shouldn’t have been his to carry. He carried favor, yes — but it was favor behind closed doors and iron locks when Potiphar’s wife’s lies dumped him in prison. Another pit. Another place to be forgotten.

If you’ve ever sat in a place that felt like the pit — waiting for someone, anyone, to remember you — you know a little of what Joseph felt. We read his story in a handful of verses, but he lived it stone by stone, night by night, rolling the dream around in his mouth like a pebble that might crack his teeth if he bit down too hard.

And yet — he served. He used his gift. An apple tree doesn’t eat its own apples. A dreamer doesn’t dream for himself alone. So Joseph interpreted dreams for others. He gave away what he had while he waited for what he was promised.

Two full years passed. Two years of staring at stone walls, wondering if the God of the dream had forgotten him, too. And then Pharaoh had a nightmare and the cupbearer remembered — the door opened and Joseph walked into the palace, interpreter of dreams, second only to Pharaoh himself.

But here’s the thing no T-shirt tells you: the palace was not the promise. Not really. The promise was a family restored, a people set apart, a land flowing with more than what Egypt could ever hold. Joseph ruled Pharaoh’s house because he had learned to rule Potiphar’s. He forgave his brothers because he knew what it was to lose everything but God. He waited decades to see his father again. He died with the promise still unfinished — his bones carried out of Egypt four hundred years later by Moses.

God keeps every promise. Even the ones that take a lifetime — or longer — to bloom.

So maybe you’re reading this from your own pit — the place where dreams taste like dust. Maybe you’re the single mom packing lunches while you pray your children see Jesus in the peanut butter and the crust you cut off. Maybe you’re the one counting sober days one by one like Joseph counted cracks in the ceiling. Maybe you’re the one still waiting for someone to remember you.

If so — take heart. The pit does not mean the promise is dead. It means you’re being shaped to carry it. God’s faithfulness is not always fast, but it is always true.

Some days the waiting will feel like dying. Some days you will want to trade the promise for anything that feels easier to hold. But wait. Serve. Cry if you must. Hope anyway.

The pit will not have the final word. God does. He always does.

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good.” (Genesis 50:20) “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him…” (Romans 8:28)

Hold on. Hold on when the coat is stripped from your shoulders. Hold on when the cupbearer forgets your name. Hold on when the palace seems farther than ever. One day — maybe here, maybe in the final country where no shadow falls — you will stand in the true promise, and the pit will become just another piece of the story God used to shape you for forever.

And that — more than any palace — is worth waiting for.