Faith in the Middle of the Mess

Have you ever felt like your life is just a mess?

And I don’t mean busy or a little overwhelming. I mean the kind of mess where every time you turn the corner, it’s something else. A loss you didn’t see coming. Health that won’t stabilize. A marriage fractured by betrayal. Finances that feel perpetually unstable. A future that refuses to come into focus.

If that doesn’t resonate with you—if everything feels neat and tidy right now—you might want to scroll ahead and come back later. But for those of us who feel like we’re living in a constant state of triage, barely catching our breath before the next thing hits, the book of Genesis feels surprisingly familiar.

As we’ve read through Genesis this month in the Wonder of the Word Bible reading plan, what we’ve encountered over and over again are lives that look, frankly, like a hot mess.

No judgment here—I say that with deep solidarity. Because their story doesn’t feel all that different from mine.

Tracing God’s Faithfulness Through Genesis

Genesis is not a collection of sanitized success stories. It is a book filled with disobedience, family dysfunction, broken trust, fear-driven decisions, favoritism, barrenness, deception, violence, famine, and long seasons of waiting.

We’ve seen God establish covenants—with Noah, with Abraham—making promises that stretched far beyond what any one generation would live to see. We’ve walked alongside the patriarchs and watched God begin to form a people for Himself, not through flawless obedience but through deeply flawed men and women.

And now, at the very end of the book, we arrive at Genesis 50 where Joseph stands before the very brothers who betrayed him, sold him into slavery, and set in motion years of suffering that included injustice, imprisonment, and loss. These are not minor offenses; they are life-altering wounds.

Even so, Joseph says something that feels almost impossible:

“You planned evil against me; God planned it for good to bring about the present result—the survival of many people.” (Genesis 50:20)

You Meant Evil, But God Meant It for Good

Joseph does not minimize the evil done to him. He speaks of it plainly. He is honest about the harm he suffered, while refusing to let that harm become the final word over his life.

It is true that evil was intended against him. But it is even truer that God meant it for good.

It takes a special kind of spiritual hindsight and what I might even call “eternal vision” to see what Joseph sees. He is able to look back over his life and see that God was never absent, never scrambling to fix things, never reacting late to human sin. God was working through every turn of the story—through betrayal, through waiting, through loss—to bring about life, preservation, and redemption.

Genesis 50:20 doesn’t just explain Joseph’s story; it gives us a lens for reading the entire book of Genesis. And, if we’re honest, it gives us a lens for reading our own lives as well. Scripture does not ask us to pretend harm didn’t happen or to spiritualize away real suffering. Scripture shows us how to navigate the hard—how to name the pain, confusion, and dismay while simultaneously holding on to the greater truth that God is good and His plans for us are good, even when life is hard.

Finding Reassurance in God’s Unfinished Work

Reading Genesis this month has been unexpectedly grounding for me.

I’m in a season where my life feels anything but orderly. I’m navigating lots of issues where there is no easy resolve. I’m warring against uncertainty that lingers longer than I’d like and pushing back on a persistent undercurrent of fear and perplexity that I don’t always have words for. And yet sitting with these stories from Genesis—really sitting with them—has brought a kind of reassurance I didn’t realize I needed.

There is something deeply comforting about encountering Scripture that gives language to what you’re feeling without inviting you to stay stuck there. It’s the difference between someone sitting in the pit with you just to gripe and someone who looks you in the eye and says, “What you’re experiencing is real. And still, we press on.”

That’s what Genesis has done for me.

Over and over again, this book shows us lives that are unmistakably messy. From fractured families to prolonged suffering to decisions driven by fear, and circumstances that look anything but redeemable; it’s quite literally a hot mess. And yet woven through all of it is the steady, unrelenting faithfulness of God.

Sitting with Genesis 50:20 in particular has reminded me that my own hot mess of a life is not beyond the reach of God. Even when I can’t see how He’s working. Even when I can’t feel it. Even when I’m afraid. Joseph’s words don’t erase the pain of what he endured, and they don’t rush us toward tidy conclusions either. But they do anchor us in this truth: while evil may touch our lives, it does not define the outcome.

As I’ve poured over these Scriptures, I’ve found myself reassured—not because my circumstances have changed but because I’ve been reminded of who God is. He is still at work. Still redeeming. Still accomplishing His purposes, even when the story feels unresolved.

And that, for me, has been enough to keep going.