Hello again!

Today we’ll begin following Joseph. (This month of July we’ll be learning stories from Genesis and Exodus in the Bible.)

This story comes from Genesis 37.

So Abraham had Isaac and Isaac had Jacob and Jacob had….a LOT of kids, just like God had promised. One of Jacob’s sons was named Joseph. Jacob liked Joseph the most.

He even gave Joseph a fancy coat. It was REALLY special and Joseph’s brothers were jealous! (Which means they were angry and really wanted one too!) And they were mean to Joseph because of it.

One day, Joseph told his brothers he had had a dream. He said, “We all had stalks of wheat growing, but mine was standing tall and all of your wheat was bending over, bowing to my wheat.”

“What do you mean!?” the brothers asked madly. “Do you think you’ll be king over us?! That we would EVER bow down to YOU, our LITTLE brother?! No way!”

Then, Jacob had another dream. “This time, the sun and moon and stars were bowing down to me.”

The brothers did not like this one.bit. “You think all of us and EVEN mom and dad will bow down to you!?” Even Jacob the daddy thought this idea was crazy.

Later, the brothers were working in the fields and Jacob sent Joseph to check on them. They were so jealous of Joseph and so angry that he thought HE could be king over them, that they decided they would kill him.

Reuben, the oldest brother said, “That’s a terrible choice! We can’t do that?!”

So they decided not to kill Joseph, but to throw him down a well (and Reuben decided HE would go back later and rescue Joseph.) So Reuben went back to work and the other brothers took Joseph’s coat and threw him in the well….but then, they took him out and instead decided to sell Joseph to some people passing through on their way to Egypt.

“Why should we just leave him when we could make some money from selling him?!” they said.

When Reuben went back to save Joseph from the well, he was very sad to find out the brothers had instead sold Joseph!

Then, they did something REALLY sneaky and they put some blood on Joseph’s coat and took it back to Jacob the daddy so he though Joseph was really dead. And he was very sad.

When the people who bought Joseph got to Egypt, THEY sold Joseph and he started working for the king’s top guard.

That’s where our story will end for today, but it’s not the end of the story for Joseph. Things look yucky now…Joseph is working in a different country, his brothers lied to the daddy and the big brother and daddy are very very sad. And Joseph was probably working very hard and he was probably very sad too to be so far from home. BUT, even though the brothers had planned bad things for Joseph, God had GOOD things in store. God ALWAYS has a plan and HE watches over His people.

For our craft, we made fancy coats. We just did colors and glued confetti on paper cut outs of coats, but you could also make a coat out of a paper grocery bag or some felt and decorate a WEARABLE coat.

   

We will learn more about Joseph tomorrow. Thanks for joining us! Love to you all!