“So he [Joseph] asked Pharaoh’s officers [the chief butler and the chief baker] who were with him in the custody of his lord’s house, saying, ‘Why do you look so sad today?’
And they said to him, ‘We each have had a dream, and there is no interpreter of it.’
So Joseph said to them, ‘Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell them to me, please.’” ~ Genesis 40:7-8, NKJV
Egyptians were religious regarding dreams and their interpretations. People could bring their dreams before an expert or specialist, or perhaps a magician, to have them properly interpreted. Pharaoh's chief butler and chief baker, imprisoned in the house of the captain of the guard (Joseph's master, Potiphar), each had dreams but did not have access to an interpreter. Since they were not experts themselves, they had no way of understanding the meaning of their dreams, and this troubled them deeply. Imagine what it must have been like having one's access to something so important be so fragile. Joseph urged Pharaoh's troubled officers to share their dreams with him, saying, "Do not interpretations belong to God?" The Egyptians would have agreed with that statement. But their access to God or gods was restricted, bureaucratic, uncertain, delayed, and in the case of these officers, easily blocked. Joseph's access to his God - the one true God - was otherwise. He needed no interpreters, no temples, no priests, no political or social clout; God was always with him. Conversation with God was never more than a prayer away. God gave Joesph the interpretations to the butler's and the baker's respective dreams, and the interpretations came to pass exactly as Joseph said. Believers do not any special circumstances, places, or intermediaries to access their heavenly Father. They don't need priests. They don't need saints. (They are the saints.) They don't need rituals. They don't need bureaucracy. They don't need experts, or interpreters. Like Joseph, we have God with us always. We go straight to Him, with no delays or relays or formalities. Our connection to Him is unbreakable, immediate, and intimate. He hears our cries; He knows our hearts; He feels our pain; He perceives our thoughts; He walks with us through our lives. He is always ready to respond when we reach out to Him, "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39, NKJV)
by Rebecca....
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