In one of the Buddhist temples in Thailand stands a 900-year-old Golden Buddha. It is considered to be 10.5 feet tall, weighing over 2.5 tons of solid gold and valued at nearly two million US dollars. But the Golden Buddha’s true value had never been so explicit throughout.
When the Burmese were on the verge of invade the city, the monks covered their golden Buddha with clay to keep it from being looted. For the two centuries that followed the Golden Buddha remained covered in clay. Believed to be made of pure clay that Buddha was considered to be worth very little until 1957 when an amazing discovery was made.
On that eventful day, a group of monks had to relocate the ‘clay’ Buddha from their temple to a new location. During the journey, the crane transporting the statue broke under the strain and crashed Buddha to the ground. When one of the monks was examining the damage caused by the crash he noticed a light shining out from a crack in the clay. Out of curiosity, he started chipping away at the clay. After many hours of labour, the monk discovered that the Buddha they believed to be made of pure clay was indeed made of precious solid gold!
God has a habit of concealing precious destinies in seemingly unfortunate life scenarios. He does so to fool potential looters of our dreams until the appointed time and place. A perfect example is the question of Joseph.
God destined a Jewish boy Joseph to be an Egyptian Prime Minister. Joseph dreamed about this as a teenager and told his brothers. His brothers were incensed by this and as a result Joseph was bought for a slave to an Egyptian army official named Potiphar. To make matters worse Joseph was later jailed after he was falsely accused of trying to rape Potiphar’s wife.
All these situations revealed and shaped the extraordinary leadership skills Joseph possessed. Eventually a situation arose in the palace and Pharaoh was desperate for a hero. Armed with the appropriate skills he learned while in custody Joseph was the only person that was able to solve it. As a result, Pharaoh made Joseph a Prime Minister.
God disguised Joseph’s destiny in a sickening identity as a slave, as an immigrant and as a convicted sex offender. He allowed a catalogue of mistakes made by his brothers and by Potiphar’s family to disguise him as the future Prime Minister of Egypt. I am firmly convinced that if God had not done this Egyptians would have had Joseph deported or assassinated before he could realize his destiny.
I believe God is doing the same for many of us today. You might be passing through a series of seemingly unfortunate or meaningless situations. But the truth is that everything happens for a reason and for a season. Your life story would never be complete without this chapter of your life. One day you will be able to look at this very season of your life and appreciate God’s integrity for permitting it to be part of your colourful destiny.
My advice to you is to keep going because the rest of your life is the best of your life.
Dreamlife Mission 