“I Mean Nothing”

Exodus 1:8 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.

Are you OK meaning nothing to someone? It isn’t that you don’t have value, it is that they don’t recognize or acknowledge your value. They dismiss who you are and what you do. Can you live with that?

Most of us have a problem with being ignored. We want and need some basic acknowledgement of our existence and worth. We don’t like being treated as a non-entity, a non-person.

And yet, most of us have had the experience of being dismissed, ignored, downtrodden, canceled, or overlooked. We know what that feels like. And if we don’t, it might mean we are the one doing those things to others. World Wars have been fought for less.

Our text tells us the moment of the LORD’s working in history when life is going to change for the Israelites. They are going to move from unprotected slaves to protected and cherished possession.

And this shift starts when the savior of both Israel and Egypt becomes forgotten. If you remember, Joseph had been the one who interpreted the Pharaoh’s dreams and instituted a plan to feed the people during a long famine. If it weren’t for Joseph, Egypt might have drifted into the history books much sooner than it did.

But in normal empire history telling, Joseph’s role had been wiped from the textbooks. His name was probably removed from the hieroglyphs, and replaced with someone wanting the credit. Joseph was a foreign slave, after all. We can’t give him credit. Only we deserve credit.

We are in the middle of a history rewrite in this country. Monuments are being removed and narratives are becoming forbidden. Joseph is being forgotten! Big mistake.

For some of us, our family has forgotten us. We meant virtually nothing to them. They have no investment or interest in what happens to us. Tragic as this is, I hear this from my clients all the time. It is much more common that I knew.

How do we handle being dismissed as a person? Can the LORD use such a dismissal for His purposes? Can you being forgotten be a Joseph & Moses moment?