I’m no dream-interpreter, but something about Pharaoh’s dreams always seemed obvious to me. Maybe it’s simply because the interpretation comes only a few verses after the dream, so we never have to wonder for too long what they meant. But with the seven good and seven bad, the cows and the grain, and all of it coming out of the Nile, the greatest resource of ancient Egyptian society... It doesn’t seem so complicated! Maybe things that seem very obvious to us, that are right under our nose, are deeper than they seem.
Because Pharaoh’s dream reflects a truth that we all know well: there are many ups and downs in life, sometimes working very much in our favor, and sometimes everything crashes to the ground. The blessings are abundant and nourishing, until they are not. It only lasts so long. What Joseph did well was not understand the meaning of the dream but rather he knew how to experience blessing and use it to buoy a community when life was tremendous difficult. He was able to turn the feeling of being blessed into a resource for later.
Joseph’s interpretation, and his actions, were entirely life-saving, but they weren’t miraculous. Or maybe they were, in some way, but just not in the way we think of oil-lasting-8-days types of miracles. It was a miracle of seeing what you have in front of you and working to make the best of it. It was a miracle of knowing that when you experience blessing, it might go further than the current moment, if you let it. To me, that feels the most spiritually challenging. How do we allow the blessing we experience to pour out from the moment? How do we allow blessing to really nourish us such that we are satiated, such that it might help us in moments where we don’t feel as blessed? The beauty here, the honesty here, is that Joseph’s leadership doesn’t tell people to ignore the hard parts, or that it isn’t difficult. Instead, he allows people to see how the blessings in life can make the hard parts less excruciating.
In this season of trying to bring more light into a world of darkness, this is one way that I’m thinking about how we each can add more light into our own lives. May we each experience the little miracles of life in a way that is soul-nourishing. May we each find corners of light in darkness, and find ways to let it spread over time. And may we each feel that our blessings last longer than we thought they would.
