The Dream That Didn’t Go According to Plan
Day 1 — Headwind: Genesis 37:18-28
Introduction
You had a picture of how this was supposed to go.
Maybe it was a marriage, a career, a calling — something you believed in, something you prayed over, something you stepped into with your whole heart. And for a while, maybe it seemed like it was working. Or maybe it never quite got off the ground at all. Either way, you’re here now, and here doesn’t look like what you expected.
Disappointment is a strange wind. It doesn’t announce itself the way fear does. It moves in quietly — in the gap between what you hoped for and what you got. It doesn’t always feel like grief. Sometimes it just feels like a low-grade exhaustion, a faint dissonance, the quiet sense that something didn’t hold.
And underneath it — if you’re honest — there’s a question you’re not sure you’re allowed to ask: Did God know about this? Was He paying attention? Did the plan go sideways on Him too?
Today we’re going to sit with a man who asked that question from the bottom of a cistern. His name was Joseph. And his story is the first thing God wants you to see.
Scripture
So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe — the ornate robe he was wearing — and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it.
As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.
Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed.
So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.
— Genesis 37:23-28 (NIV)
Reflection
What’s Happening in the Text
Joseph is seventeen years old, and he has a dream. Two of them, actually — vivid, specific, unmistakably from God. In both, his brothers bow down to him. He makes the mistake of telling them. They already resent him; now they hate him.
When the moment comes, they throw him in a hole and sit down to eat lunch. Then they sell him to a passing caravan for the price of a slave. Joseph goes from favored son to cargo in the span of an afternoon.
There is no record that he said anything. No protest, no prophecy, no courage speech. Just a boy in a pit, watching his brothers negotiate his price, then the long road to Egypt with strangers, everything he knew growing smaller behind him.
The dreams were real. God gave them. And now Joseph is a slave.
What This Means for the Reader
Here is what makes disappointment different from other adverse winds: it often arrives wearing the clothes of a promise.
Joseph’s story doesn’t begin with a mistake. It begins with a dream — a real one, from God. The very thing that made the betrayal so devastating was the thing that came before it: the sense that God had spoken, that there was a direction, that this life was going somewhere specific.
You may know this geography. You stepped toward something you believed God put in front of you — and instead of the door opening, it closed. Or someone you trusted turned. Or the circumstances that were supposed to align didn’t. And now you are somewhere you didn’t choose, wondering if you misread the whole thing.
The temptation in that place is to reach one of two conclusions: either God didn’t actually say what you thought He said, or God said it and then lost control of the situation. Both feel like the only options when you’re at the bottom of the cistern.
But there is a third option that Joseph’s story will spend the next thirteen years demonstrating: God’s word does not expire when circumstances contradict it. The dream didn’t die in the pit. The plan didn’t end at the Egyptian border. What looked like the destruction of the promise was, in fact, the beginning of its delivery — by a route Joseph never would have chosen and could not have imagined.
We are only at Day 1. You don’t need to see the whole arc today. What you need to know is this: you are not the first person to find themselves in a place that doesn’t match the promise. And the God who gave Joseph his dreams knew exactly where Joseph would sleep that night.
He knew. He was not surprised. And He did not abandon the plan.
Grace Note
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” — Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)
What most people don’t know is where Jeremiah 29:11 sits in the story. God speaks these words to His people while they are in exile — not before the difficulty, not after it, but in the middle of it. The promise of a future is given to people who are already in the cistern. That is not an accident. That is the point.
Prayer Prompt
Father, I’ll be honest — I came into this with a picture of how it was supposed to go. And it didn’t go that way. I don’t know if I’m more confused or more tired, but something in me is quieter than it used to be, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.
I want to trust You. I do trust You — or I’m trying to. But it’s hard to hold onto a promise when the circumstances are telling a different story. It’s hard to believe the dream was real when everything around me looks like the pit.
So I’m bringing You the gap today — the space between what I hoped for and what I have. I’m not asking You to explain it. I’m asking You to be in it with me. And I’m asking You to help me believe, the way Joseph must have had to keep believing, that where I am right now is not the end of the story.
You know the plans. I don’t have to. Help me trust You, my Captain, even when I can’t see the destination.
Amen.
Response
1. Name the Gap (Written Reflection): Take five minutes and write down — briefly, honestly — what you hoped for and what you have instead. Don’t explain it or theologize it yet. Just name it. The gap between those two things is the wind this week is about.
2. Sit With Joseph (Contemplative): Read Genesis 37:23-28 again slowly. This time, don’t read it as a Bible story. Read it as the account of a real person’s worst day. Sit with what it must have felt like to watch the caravan disappear over the horizon. Let his experience make contact with yours.
3. Speak It Out Loud (Verbal): Say this sentence out loud, wherever you are: “God’s word does not expire when circumstances contradict it.” You don’t have to feel it yet. Say it anyway. Sometimes the mouth leads the heart.
To read all the posts in this devotional series, visit: https://www.thisistheway.live/t/headwind
© Steve Peschke / This Is The Way
Glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for reaching out and for the subscription. It is a particular joy for me as well to "stumble" into an old friend. Hope and pray all is well for you.
I “stumbled”(😉) upon your post this am. Thank you Steve!