Today's Maxwell Quote

From this talk:

Much time also ensued between the walk of Joseph's brothers back from the pit into which they had thrown Joseph and their later walk back (with much-needed corn) from Egypt to Canaan, when all the brothers who had treated him so terribly were saved by a generous Joseph. If we wonder today why, when individuals in groups become unprotesting participants in a veering toward evil, no one seems to speak up; and if we are perplexed that when some speak up it is only in a weak Reuben-type dissent (which makes "I told you we shouldn't have done that" a likely utterance)‚—if we wonder why those things happen, it is because individuals, in this case Joseph's brothers, failed. It is always the same, brothers and sisters. Our failures are individual. You and I, therefore, have an obligation to grasp those opportunities for truth saying and for restraining evil. If we do not, we will tumble, as Joseph's brothers did, collectively. Weak individuals make great dominoes!

Perhaps a young Joseph, of whom his brothers could not even speak peaceably, might even have given them some small cause for jealousy. But a matured, magnanimous, and highly spiritual Joseph (significantly and modestly) did not at first even reveal his identity to his poverty-stricken brothers. The tree rings on Joseph's soul must have been large, indeed, including the year when he was in the pit and was then sold into a strange culture in the beginning of a great adventure. Joseph was victorious "on the road."