Here is a passage from Genesis, one infrequently read in the liturgy:
9 Then he had another dream, and told it to his brothers. “Look, I had another dream,” he said; “this time, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” 10 When he told it to his father and his brothers, his father reproved him and asked, “What is the meaning of this dream of yours? Can it be that I and your mother and your brothers are to come and bow to the ground before you?” 11 So his brothers were furious at him but his father kept the matter in mind.
Chapters 12-50 of Genesis are crammed full of stories from the lives of our spiritual ancestors. We get enough details to give us flashes of insight into how God works in and through incredibly messy and complicated human lives. Here we have a seventeen year old Joseph infuriating his 10 older brothers with what they hear as dreams of grandiosity. Joseph is the first son born to their father’s favored wife (and, obviously very late, as the youngest of 11) and the only son given a long, decorated robe. They boil with resentment.
Even his father, Jacob, calls him out for this. But…by this time in his eventful life Jacob has learned not to completely trust is his own first reaction. Can Jacob understand how this “bow down to Joseph” would be an accurate interpretation of the dreams? No. But is he sure that his understanding is complete, comprehensive, and conclusive? No. He leaves a crack in the doorway (“his father kept the matter in mind”) and, long term, continued to learn more about how God works.
After Joseph’s disappearance (death?) while with his brothers; after many years of hearing nothing of Joseph and then being beset by a famine; after sending the older brothers to Egypt where they received grain for survival but had to leave one brother there as a hostage; after risking sending his last, youngest son from the mother of Joseph to redeem the hostage and get more grain…after all that, Jacob finally sees the mysterious working out of God’s plan for salvation for all of them, a plan that reaches back and confirms the meaning of the dreams they had scorned and rejected. God had worked in mysterious ways.
There are many things to be learned from all of this, but consider just these:
We do not see far enough.
We do not understand deeply enough.
We are not patient enough.
We must be extremely wary of making definitive judgments.