Deported Dreams

     I've been thinking about the true story of a highly gifted young man centuries ago whose promising life and career seemed to take a disastrous detour. Even as a teenager he had the gift of administration.  His father made him a supervisor in the family business.  It is recorded that the young man had significant leadership dreams and was also a bit arrogant about his skills.
  
    Through a series of apparently unfortunate events, this young man was deported as a slave. Gone was his job, the privileges, doting father, inheritance and grand dreams.  He was bought by a high ranking government official in a foreign land.   In spite of the new language, strange culture and no personal rights, the young man quickly moved up in his employment.  His owner recognized the new slave's gifts and put them to use.   Soon he was made administrator over the official's entire estate.  Other government people crossed his path.  He learned about protocol and the inner structure of how the country was run.  For all the sorrow of being taken from his home country and people, his life now seemed as good as it could get. 

    Then, more disastrous events.  The young man's high position was sabotaged by a false charge.  He could have been killed but ended up in prison. Meanwhile, the warden took notice of this model prisoner and gave him some responsibilities.  Before long the young man was virtually running the prison under the warden's overseeing eye.  At one hopeful point a chance appeared for a fair trial and release but the moment passed. More months and years went by.

     Finally, the unthinkable and undreamable.  In a crisis, the country's highest ruler had the young man, now close to 30, brought before him from prison.  A palace official had put in a good word.  The ruler urgently needed a one-of-a-kind administrator to avert a looming national disaster with international ramifications.   The young man who had been a slave for nearly half his life was released from prison and elevated to prime minister.  In the next years, his gifts, knowledge, experience, and even the seeming disasters and detours, were foundational to his effective national governing.  The positive effects of his position reached even to his original homeland.  Eventually, though he lived in this foreign land until his death, he was reunited with his father and family.  Before he died, he asked that his bones be buried in his original country, which they were. 

   Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?  But it's history.   Now if we had our "Dream Coach" who'd asked us to read this story,  I think we'd be asked questions like:

  Are you experiencing an apparent gifting detour or dream disaster?

   What might you be learning now from these experiences that could be useful someday?