Dear friend,
There is a particular kind of silence that falls over a room when powerful people believe they have finally won.
I have sat in enough rooms over fifty years to recognise it. That stillness. That certainty. The quiet that comes when men with authority believe the threat has passed and the story is over.
They have felt that silence before about the man you elected. They have felt it more than once.
Before I go further — I want to place something in your hands this morning. Many of you have written to me this week asking how to make sense of what is happening in Washington, in the courts, in the press rooms where decisions are made about what you are allowed to know. I wrote a guide called They Tried To Stop Him, and it does exactly what the title says. It walks through the Biblical pattern of men chosen for a moment — men the world tried to silence — and it shows you where we are inside that pattern right now. You can find it here:
I think it will settle something in you that has been restless.
Now. Let me tell you about a man named Joseph.
You know the name. You may know the story. But I want you to sit with it differently this morning.
Joseph was a young man with a gift he did not ask for. He could see things. He could interpret what others could not understand. And that gift made him dangerous to the people around him — not because he was wicked, but because he was right. There is no threat more unsettling to the powerful than a man who simply tells the truth about what is coming.
His brothers stripped him of his coat and threw him into a pit. They sold him to strangers for twenty pieces of silver. They told his father he was dead. They sat down to eat their bread while he cried out from that pit, and Genesis chapter 37 records that detail without flinching. They sat down and ate their bread.
Do you understand what that means? They celebrated while he suffered. They were certain they had ended him.
But you know what happened next.
Every hand that was raised against Joseph became, in the economy of God, the instrument that carried him toward his destiny. The slave traders who bought him brought him to Egypt. The false accusation of Potiphar's wife brought him to prison. The prison brought him to Pharaoh's butler. And the butler brought him to Pharaoh himself. Every door that was slammed against Joseph became, in time, a door that opened.
By Genesis chapter 41, the same man they threw in a pit was standing before the most powerful ruler in the known world, interpreting his dreams and being given authority over all of Egypt. Pharaoh took his signet ring off his own hand and put it on Joseph's hand.
The people who tried to stop him ended up bowing before him.
Now I am not going to tell you that Donald Trump is Joseph. That would be too simple and too small. But I am going to tell you what I believe with the full weight of fifty years of studying this Book.
There is a Biblical pattern. It is unmistakable. God does not abandon the men He selects for a moment in history simply because other men decide to oppose them. The opposition is not the end of the story. In Scripture, the opposition is almost always the mechanism through which God does His most important work.
Think of Moses. Pharaoh said no. Pharaoh had the army. Pharaoh had the horses and the chariots and the walls of water on either side. And yet Exodus chapter 14, verse 14, says this: The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.
Think of Daniel. The men who envied him had him thrown to the lions. They sealed the stone so he could not escape. They were so certain it was finished that they went home and could not sleep from excitement. And Daniel chapter 6 tells us that the king himself could not eat and could not sleep all night, and rose at dawn and ran to the lion's den calling out in anguish. He was not certain Daniel was dead. Something in him could not rest.
There is something in the enemies of righteous men that cannot rest. They know, somewhere deep beneath their certainty, that the story is not over.
I have watched this country for many decades now. I watched it from a distance and I have watched it more closely in recent years as so many of you have written to me with your grief. You have told me about your fear for your grandchildren. You have told me about the morning you woke up and felt like a stranger in the country you were born in. You have told me that you pray and you wonder if anyone in power is listening and if anything is going to hold.
I want to speak plainly to you this morning.
The silence you are feeling is not the silence of God's absence. It is the silence of God's patience. There is a difference, and it matters enormously. The absence of noise is not the absence of movement. God was not absent from Joseph's pit. He was not absent from the lion's den. He was not visible in the way the world understands visibility. But He was working.
He is working now.
I do not know the exact shape of what is coming. I have never claimed to. But I know the pattern. I have read this Book too many times to miss it. And the pattern tells me that the men who sat down to eat their bread above Joseph's pit did not have the last word.
They never do.
Start this week with that settled in your chest. Not as a political sentiment. As a theological conviction. As something you received from Scripture and carry into Monday morning like bread for the journey.
God bless you, friend. I am glad you are here.
Three things I want you to do this week:
One. Read Genesis chapter 37 and chapter 41 back to back. Read them slowly. Pay attention to how much time passed between the pit and the palace. Pay attention to how many hands were involved in moving Joseph forward without any of them knowing what they were doing. Let that sit with you.
Two. Write down one moment in your own life when what felt like the worst thing became the thing that carried you somewhere better. You do not have to share it with anyone. Just write it. That memory is evidence. Hold onto it.
Three. If you have been carrying a particular worry about this country — about the election, about the courts, about your family — bring it specifically before God this week. Not as a general anxiety. Name it. Say it aloud if you can. The God who heard Joseph in the pit hears specific cries, not only general ones.
Four. Share this letter with one person who needs it. You know who they are. The person who has gone quiet. The person who has stopped believing the story can turn. Send it to them this morning.
Five. If you have not yet read They Tried To Stop Him, this is the week. It will give you language for what you already believe but have not been able to fully say.
God bless you. And God bless America.
— Father Thomas