Joseph: From the Pit to the Palace — A Word for Your In-Between Season

By Dr Ayobami Gideon Babalola • Christian Faith & Motivation

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good.”

— Genesis 50:20 (NIV)

There is a particular kind of season that most professionals eventually face — a season where things are objectively getting worse, not better, despite doing everything right.

Joseph’s story is the most complete biblical picture of that season I know. It is worth revisiting slowly, because most retellings skip the parts that matter most to anyone currently in their own pit.

The Pit Was Not the Only Setback

We tend to remember Joseph’s story as: pit, then Egypt, then palace. A clean three-act arc. The actual timeline is considerably harder.

Joseph is thrown into a pit by his own brothers — betrayal by family, the people who should have protected him. He is sold into slavery. He works his way into a position of trust in Potiphar’s household through sheer competence and integrity, only to be falsely accused of assault and thrown into prison — punished for the very integrity that should have protected him. In prison, he correctly interprets a fellow prisoner’s dream and asks only one thing in return: to be remembered. He is not remembered. Two more years pass in prison before his circumstances change.

This is not a single setback followed by triumph. It is a decade of compounding setbacks — betrayal, false accusation, imprisonment, and being forgotten — with no visible evidence, at any point along the way, that it was leading anywhere good.

The Question Joseph Never Gets to Ask

What strikes me most, reading this story as someone who has built businesses and led teams across cultures, is what Joseph does not do at any point in the narrative. He does not appear to demand an explanation from God. He does not appear to spend his imprisonment plotting revenge against his brothers. He continues to work with excellence in every circumstance he is placed in — as a slave, as a prisoner, and eventually as a governor.

This is not passive resignation. It is a specific kind of active faithfulness: doing the next right thing with excellence, in a circumstance you did not choose and do not understand, without waiting for the meaning to be revealed first.

The Reframe That Changes Everything

The line that makes this story theologically remarkable comes at the very end, when Joseph — now the second most powerful man in Egypt — finally faces the brothers who sold him into slavery.

He does not minimise what they did. He does not pretend the harm was not real. Instead, he holds two things simultaneously that we often treat as mutually exclusive: you intended this for harm, and God intended it for good.

This is not a claim that the harm did not matter, or that forgiveness means forgetting. It is a claim that God’s capacity to work good through a situation does not depend on the situation being good, or on the people involved having good intentions. Joseph’s brothers’ betrayal was genuinely evil. It was also, in God’s hands, the exact mechanism that positioned Joseph to save an entire region from famine — including, eventually, the very family who betrayed him.

What This Means for Your Current Pit

If you are in a season right now that feels like a compounding series of setbacks — a job loss that followed a betrayal, a false accusation that followed genuine effort, a delay that has gone on far longer than seems reasonable — Joseph’s story is not offering you a promise that everything will resolve into a palace. Not every pit leads to Egypt in this life.

What it offers instead is a different question to ask in the meantime. Not “why is this happening to me,” which usually has no satisfying answer this side of eternity. But: “how do I do the next right thing with excellence, in the actual circumstance I am in, while trusting that meaning may become visible later — or may not become visible at all until eternity, and choosing faithfulness regardless?”

A Prayer for the In-Between Season:

Lord, I do not understand this season, and I am tired of waiting for it to make sense. Like Joseph, help me to do the next right thing with excellence, even here, even now. I release my need to understand the meaning before I am willing to be faithful. Whatever was intended against me, use it for good — in me, and eventually, through me. Amen.

What “pit” season are you walking through right now? You don’t have to share the details — but if this spoke to you, let me know in the comments. I read every one.

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