Presented to The Salvation Army Alberni Valley Ministries, 26 September 2021, by Captain Michael Ramsay on the Sunday of Prayer for the Victims of Human Trafficking
Joseph was trafficked. As a boy, a teenager, he was sold into slavery by his own brothers. From there he spent many years in slavery, taken to a foreign country where he served at the will of his owners and following that he spent many more years in prison – his family did not know where he was, they did not know that he was even alive.
Children are still trafficked today. When we were in Toronto our corps was involved in an outreach to prostituted women and girls. Many trafficked people in Canada are prostituted. In Vancouver people in our corps had an outreach to prostituted boys and men, as well as women and girls. When we were in Saskatchewan, I went with another Corps Officer to speak to our MP about specific people we knew, who were trafficked as slave household labour here in Canada -which for them was a foreign country – very much like Joseph in Egypt. This week is Orange Shirt Day: Also enslaved in Canada are children taken from First Nations and trafficked around this country without their family even knowing if they are dead or alive.
After Joseph was trafficked to Egypt, Joseph suffered many years with no recourse to escape or appeal. Joseph’s circumstances were horrible. There are many people today, even in our country, who do not have the rights of a citizen and there are people, even in our country today who are moved around from city to city or province to province without having any say in the matter and without their loved ones even knowing if they are alive – Just like Joseph.
There is hope however. This hope is very important. Joseph had hope even in his darkest times. God used Joseph’s faith to make and keep him stronger, humble, and more resilient.
Joseph was assaulted by his brothers, sold, trafficked to Egypt, and enslaved as a household servant. It was in this context that this particular verse appears, Genesis 39:2a, “The Lord was with Joseph and he prospered.”
Joseph was a teenager who has been sold into slavery in a foreign country – where I imagine he didn’t yet even know the language. This is the condition that he is in when where it records Genesis 39:2a, “The Lord was with Joseph and he prospered.” That doesn’t sound very prosperous.
There is more. While Joseph was a slave, his master’s wife took a liking to him. She wanted to have an affair. Joseph wouldn’t do it and spent much of his time trying to avoid her. She accused him of sexual assault and Joseph was thrown into prison. This is what it looked like when and where it says that the LORD was with Joseph and he prospered. This doesn’t sound very prosperous.
Joseph was in a terrible spot, as terrible as some trafficked and other people are today. It is not to be made light of at all – but there is hope. That hope was Joseph’s prosperity. That hope is that the Lord is with in our darkest times. When all the bad things are happening to us that happen to people who are trafficked, in slavery, or in prison, or whatever you or someone you know might be going through right now, God is with us. God loves us and God can get us through it.
We must do anything we can to help people out of their situations. Like our friends in Toronto and Vancouver and like when Captain Ed and I intervened on behalf of someone who was trafficked as a household slave in Saskatchewan
But also please know that when or if you or someone you know is in a spot as bad as Joseph (or even not as bad or even worse), God can get you through. Whatever you have gone through and are going through God will not give up on you. No one can take that hope from you. Grab hold of it and never let it go. It is how you can survive and even prosper when everything about your life is not prosperous and everything is threatening your survival
God promises that He will never leave us nor forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:8, Joshua 1:5, Hebrews 13:5). He will bring you through where you are; He will bring us through where we are: that is our hope.
Let us pray.
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