High Yield

How prepared are you for difficult times ahead?

Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from the presence of Pharaoh, and went through all the land of Egypt. During the seven plenteous years the earth produced abundantly. He gathered up all the food of the seven years when there was plenty in the land of Egypt, and stored up food in the cities; he stored up in every city the food from the fields around it. So Joseph stored up grain in such abundance like the sand of the sea that he stopped measuring it; it was beyond measure. - Genesis 41:46-49

In yesterday's reading we saw how Joseph showed himself ready for work with a plan to save all of Egypt, and today we see that plan take form.

During the years when the harvest produced far more than was needed, Joseph made sure that every city stored up all the grain it could to the point where so much was put away, it couldn't be counted.

Knowing bad times were coming, he let no one cut back on production.  Instead, every farmer planted as much as the land could hold.

There was a cost to doing that, but Pharaoh trusted him and told everyone to do as he said.

If you had an opportunity to work extra hard for a while and stock up savings, would you do it?  Or would you take advantage of the sudden prosperity and enjoy life?

The farmers who sold their surplus to Joseph so he could store it for the days of famine ahead needed to hold onto that money so they could buy back grain during the bad times. 

While the plan is a brilliant one, it can only work if everyone is all in.  Everyone needs to be willing to save when times are good and spend when they are bad.

Both require discipline and trust.

What made it work was that everyone experienced the same things at the same time.  All had seven years of plenty and then all had seven years of famine.

Had some been suffering while others were benefiting, I doubt this approach would have worked.  The people benefiting from the good harvest might not want to give away their harvest to people who couldn't afford to pay for it.

And this is where we are today.  Some have and some have not.

So, how do we learn from Joseph's ingenuity? 

Maybe we have to wait for a sign that a natural disaster is coming, so we can all store up grain for the bad times.

Or maybe we should find a way to store up the excess we produce and share it with those who have nothing.

There is a cost to that, and maybe that is why we struggle to get people to help by donating their time and money.

But if we remember the lesson that good times can be followed by bad for any and for all, we might just see it as an investment in our own future.

Wouldn't you like to know there is a place to go when you need it?

More to come...