Zabenthung Dominic

He was only seventeen.
A dreamer with eyes full of stars and a heart full of hope.
He spoke of dreams he didn’t fully understand—
of sheaves bowing, of stars bending.
He believed in love.
He believed in family.
He never imagined that jealousy could wear familiar faces,
that betrayal could speak in the voice of a brother.

One moment, he was walking toward them with bread.
The next, he was thrown into a pit.
No warning. No explanation.
Just the sound of laughter above and the taste of dust below.

He cried. He begged.
But no one answered.
He watched their backs as they walked away,
trading blood for silver,
brotherhood for coins.

And that night,
as his father wept over a bloodstained robe,
Joseph wept too—alone, shackled, forgotten.

Years passed.
He was sold, accused, imprisoned.
He was faithful, yet abandoned.
Kind, yet mistreated.
He helped others rise, but no one remembered his name.

How many nights did he stare at the ceiling of a cell,
asking God why?
Asking how a dream could lead to this?

But the silence of God is not the absence of God.
The dungeon was a doorway.
The pit was a path.
And the tears were seeds.

From the dungeon, he rose.
From prisoner to prince.
From forgotten to favored.
Yet even with robes on his shoulders and rings on his fingers,
a part of him was still standing by that pit,
still seventeen,
still waiting to be seen.

And then they came.
Those same faces.
Older now. Tired. Weathered by guilt and famine.
They did not know him,
but he knew them.

He saw the brothers who had sold him.
He heard their voices.
And in that moment,
everything came rushing back:
the pit, the chains, the prison, the pain.

He tried to test them.
He tried to hide it.
But the heart remembers what the mind tries to bury.

Finally, he could bear it no longer.

He sent everyone out.
The palace emptied,
but his heart overflowed.

Then it came.
Not a word. Not a sermon.
Just a sound.

A cry.

A broken, holy, ancient kind of cry.
It shook the walls.
It startled the servants.
It pierced the skies.

“I am Joseph.”

Time stopped.
The brothers froze.
Their shame stood naked before them.

They expected wrath.
They deserved it.
But instead, they saw tears.

Joseph wept.
Not because he was weak,
but because he was free.
Free from hate.
Free from vengeance.
Free to love.

He embraced the very ones who broke him.
He kissed the hands that once threw him away.

And then he whispered what only grace can say:
“Do not be afraid. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”

What kind of heart speaks like that?
What kind of love remembers betrayal and still chooses to bless?

Only a heart that has been with God.
Only a love that has walked through suffering and come out with mercy in its hands.

Now pause. Close your eyes. Go back.

Go back to your own past.
To the faces that wounded you.
To the ones you hurt.
To the betrayals, the silences, the rejections.
The friend who turned away.
The word that shattered something inside you.

We all have pits.
We all have prisons.
We all have names we don’t say anymore.

But Joseph’s tears speak to every wounded soul:
You are not what was done to you.
And they are not beyond forgiveness.

The healing of a heart does not come from forgetting.
It comes from remembering differently—
through tears, through truth,
through a God who turns graves into gardens and betrayals into blessings.

The conclusion?

Forgive.
Not because they deserve it,
but because you need to breathe.
Because the story is not over.
Because mercy is how the chains fall off.

Let your soul weep.
Let your heart soften.
Let the past break, not your spirit, but your pride.

Because the most powerful words in the world are not “I’m sorry” or “I hate you.”
They are:
“Come close to me.”

That is how heaven begins.
That is how families are restored.
That is how souls are resurrected.

That is how Jesus lived,
with arms wide open on the cross,
saying with His blood,
“Come close to Me.”

And that is how your story,
no matter how broken,
becomes beautiful again.