Genesis 37:29-36: in context

Joseph's brothers, having sold him to traders, deceive their father. They dip his tunic in goat's blood and bring it to Jacob, who concludes that a wild animal has torn his son to pieces. Jacob tears his clothes, puts on sackcloth, and mourns for many days. His children rise to comfort him, but he refuses to be comforted, saying, I will go down to the grave to my son, mourning. He grieves a son he believes dead, in inconsolable sorrow, certain his loss is final.

Jacob's grief is real and terrible, and it must not be minimized: he believed his beloved son torn to pieces, and he mourned inconsolably. But we, the readers, know something Jacob did not. Joseph was not dead. He was alive, carried to Egypt, and through this very loss God was working, unseen, to save Jacob and his whole family from the famine that would come. The loss Jacob mourned as final was not final; the son he believed dead lived; and the very grief that seemed pure disaster was the beginning of a deliverance no one could yet see. What looked like the end was the hidden start of God's saving work. This holds a gentle truth for our own griefs, offered carefully, for grief is real and not to be waved away. Sometimes we grieve over losses as though they were final and pure disaster, certain, as Jacob was, that all is lost. And sometimes, as with Jacob, God is at work in the very loss, unseen, turning what looks like disaster toward a good we cannot yet perceive. This does not make the grief less real; Jacob's sorrow was genuine, and so is ours. But it means that our sense of a loss as final and meaningless may not be the whole truth, that God can be working, hidden, in the very thing we mourn. Joseph himself would later tell his brothers, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to save many people alive. The disaster held a deliverance. This does not ask us to deny our grief or pretend a loss is not a loss. It asks us to hold our griefs within a trust: that God can work, unseen, even in what we mourn, that the loss we think final may not be, that he is able to turn toward good what looks to us like pure disaster. All things work together for good, Paul says, for those who love God. Jacob mourned a son who lived, a loss God was turning to salvation; and while our griefs are real, we may hold them within the trust that God can be at work, hidden, in the very things we mourn, turning toward a good we cannot yet see what looks to us like final loss.

When I grieve a loss as final and meaningless, certain, as Jacob was, that all is lost, can I hold my real grief within the trust that God may be at work, unseen, in the very thing I mourn, as he was working through Joseph's apparent death to save a family, and that the loss I think final may not be the whole truth, for God is able to turn toward good what looks to me like pure disaster?