Evil. God. Good.

Life turns every person upside down. No one escapes unscathed. Not the woman who discovers her husband is having an affair. Not the businessman whose investments are embezzled by a crooked colleague. Not the teenager who discovers that a night of romance has resulted in a surprise pregnancy. Not the pastor who feels his faith shaken by questions of suffering and fear.

We’d be foolish to think we are invulnerable.

But we’d be just as foolish to think that evil wins the day.

Haven’t we discovered this in the story of Joseph? Saddled with setbacks: family rejection, deportation, slavery, and imprisonment. Yet he emerged triumphant, a hero of his generation. Among his final recorded words are these comments to his brothers: “You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good.” (Gen. 50:20).

This is the repeated pattern in Scripture: Evil. God. Good.

• Evil came to Job. Tempted him, tested him. Job struggled. But God countered. He spoke truth. Declared sovereignty. Job in the end chose God. Satan’s prime target became God’s star witness. Good resulted.
• Evil came to Moses. Convinced him to murder an Egyptian guard, liberate a people with anger. God countered. He placed Moses on a forty-year cooldown. Moses in the end chose God. He liberated like a shepherd, not a soldier. Good resulted.
• And Jesus. How many times in his earthly life did bad become good?
• The Bethlehem innkeeper told Jesus’ parents to try their luck in the barn. That was bad. God entered the world in the humblest place on earth. That was good.
• The wedding had no wine. Bad. The wedding guests witnessed the first miracle of Jesus. Good.
• The storm scared the faith out of the apostles. Bad. The sight of water-walking Jesus turned them into worshippers. Good.
• Five thousand men needed food for their families. Bad day to be a disciple. Jesus turned a basket into a bakery. Good day to be a disciple.

With Jesus, bad became good just as night becomes day—regularly, reliably, refreshingly. And redemptively.

See the cross on the hill? Can you hear the soldiers pound the nails? Jesus’ enemies smirk. Satan’s demons lurk. All that is evil rubs its hands in glee. “This time,” Satan whispers. “This time I will win.”

For a silent Saturday it appeared he had. The final breath. The battered body. Mary wept. Blood seeped down the timber into the dirt. Followers lowered God’s Son before the sun set. Soldiers sealed the tomb, and night fell over the earth.

Yet what Satan intended as the ultimate evil, God used for the ultimate good. God rolled the rock away. Jesus walked out on Sunday morning, a smile on his face and a bounce to his steps. And if you look closely, you can see Satan scampering from the cemetery with his forked tail between his legs.

“Will I ever win?” he grumbles.

No. He won’t. The stories of Jesus, Joseph, and a thousand others assure us that what Satan intends for evil, God uses for good.

My friend Christine Caine is walking proof of this promise. She is an Australian spark plug. Five feet three inches of energy, passion, and love. To sit down with Christine is to share a meal with a modern-day Joseph. She is at war with one of the greatest calamities of our generation: sex slavery. She travels three hundred days a year. She meets with cabinets, presidents, and parliaments.

Pretty impressive for a girl whose world was turned upside down. At the age of thirty she stumbled upon the stunning news of her adoption. The couple who raised her never intended for her to know. When Christine happened upon the truth, she tracked down her biological parents.

The official records of her birth told her this much: she was born to a Greek mother named Panagiota. The box designated “Father’s Name” bore the word “Unknown.”

But there was more. Next to the box marked “Child’s Name” was another seven-letter word. It sucked the air out of Christine. “Unnamed.”

Abandoned by those who conceived and bore you. Could anything be worse? Actually, yes. To be sexually abused by members of your family. Time and time again they took advantage of her.

Yet what they intended for evil, God used for good. Christine laid hold of Isaiah 49: “The Lord has called Me from the womb; from the matrix of My mother He has made mention of My name” (v. 1).

Years later when she heard of the plight of girls caught in the sex trade, she knew she had to respond. When she saw their faces on missing-person posters and heard of the abuse at the hands of captors, this unnamed, abused girl set out to rescue the nameless and abused girls of her day. Satan’s plan to destroy her actually emboldened her resolve to help others. Her A21 Mission has offices around the world. And as of the writing of these words, several hundred young women have been assisted and released.

Once again, what Satan intended for evil, God . . . Well, you know the rest.

Or do you? Do you believe that no evil is beyond God’s reach? That he can redeem every pit, including this one in which you find yourself?

God sees a Joseph in you. Yes, you! You in the pit. Your family needs a Joseph, a courier of grace in a day of anger and revenge. Your descendants need a Joseph, a sturdy link in the chain of faith. Your generation needs a Joseph. There is a famine out there. Will you harvest hope and distribute it to the people? Will you be a Joseph?