Joseph

I am now finished the story of Joseph. I am also reading a book about Joseph (have been for a few months now!) called 'God meant it for good' by Kendall. It's been a good book, so far. In a way I didn't feel like writing anything about Joseph here because the book is so good, and what more could I write? But I really like Joseph, so I thought I'd write a bit. The Bible really allows you to see his progression from a teenager with crazy dreams, to a dream interpreter, to the ruler of Egypt (second only to Pharoah).
As a teenager he has the crazy dreams about his family bowing down to him. Which did turn out to be prophetically true. And while Joseph seems to get a kick out of it as a teenager, when he grows up and it actually happens, I don't think it was as fun as he thought it was going to be! It actually caused him a lot of turmoil. And not only does he have the dreams, but he tells his family the dreams. And they (obviously) don't like what the dreams seem to be saying, so it creates turmoil there too.
I relate to this because I have a lot of crazy dreams. Though most of them are not as easy to interpret as Joseph's first dreams. I do get where Jopeph is coming from because when you have a "God dream", it's pretty exciting/scary and it tends to stick with you all the time. I do understand why he told his family. He probably couldn't keep it in.
I try to carefully analyze who I should share my dreams with. Well, I do post pretty much all of them on my dream blog, but it's a pretty crazy blog that I don't really think that many people read. I think Bob and my mom read it! But I feel that the people who read it are safe people. And there are safe people (like Al) that if I had a dream about him/his family/Rustle that I have no problem sharing. If I get a dream about a specific person, I try to analyse- am I just supposed to pray about this, or tell the person. Like last night I had a dream about someone and I don't really understand what it means and the person is not someone who I've ever talked about dreams with before. So right now, I just pray about it. It may be that the person would understand the dream if I told them, but I would just wait and see in conversation if there is a way to bring it up in a non-threatening manner or not!

The next phase for Joseph is where God helps him interpret dreams. And Joseph does give the glory to God, where as a teenager, he wanted it for himself.
When I read about the interpretation, it makes me think that over the years he had a lot of dreams himself and God was teaching him to interpret that way.

And then the last phase is as ruler of the land. He must have been a pretty likeable guy because Pharoah seems pretty pleased with the guy he pulled out of prison. And that Joseph is a pretty smooth financial operator. During the famine years he collected all the money, livestock and land from the people of Egypt. (and I think made them servants after that?) He took everything for Pharoah! That's some finacial management of a country!