Food Czar of the world

Genesis 41:47-57

Was your mother like mine, was she always telling you to eat the hominy?  I hated hominy!  Your mother may have chosen some other grotesque item like chicken gizzards to use as a teaching tool, or how many children around the world will go to bed hungry, and would love to have anything, even hominy or chicken gizzards?  First and foremost, I knew why we ate hominy and chicken gizzards, they were cheap, hominy was five cents a can and mother could afford that, but not green beans that cost twenty cents a can.  Now mother was not trying to feed the world, her job was to feed five people for One hundred and twenty dollars and that $120.00 covered all the needs of the family for one month and that included, food, school clothes, lunches, electrical and water bills.  We ate a lot of hominy but I could not eat a chicken gizzard!

Mother’s job was just to feed five people and she did a great job with that assignment.   As a child, I learned the story of Joseph, as I’m sure you did, but did not grasp the magnitude of the assignment God had given this thirty-year-old man.  His job was to prepare during the seven plentiful years and they were abundant in production, for seven years of famine, where nothing was produced.  This is what is recorded; “During the seven plentiful years, the earth produced abundantly, and he gathered up all the food of these seven years, which occurred in the land of Egypt, and put the food from the cities.  He put in every city the food from the fields around it.  And Joseph stored up grain in great abundance, like the sand of the sea, until he ceased to measure it, for it could not be measured.” (Genesis 41:47-49)

Long before any man had come up with a national warehousing and distribution system, God had shown it to Joseph.  The bad news is that only Egypt got the news on the famine that was coming, and only Egypt was prepared.   Now Joseph’s job has increased, he is  Food Czar of the world.  Verse 57 states; “Moreover, all the earth came to Egypt to Joseph to buy grain, because the famine was severe over all the earth.”

How different this story would have been if Joseph had not listened and believed God, but the good news is, he did.  You and I also have a story and it is important that we also listen to Joseph’s God and do like Joseph did; first he listened, next he believed and trusted what God was telling him.  Then he put God’s plan for his life into action and that action was a blessing to everyone.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice