The Light at the Bottom of the Pit

Landing with a thud at the bottom of a deep pit, Yosef must have wondered if things could get any worse. Indeed they would when his master's wife decided she wanted him. But how did he view all these events? When he eventually revealed himself to his brothers he let them know that he did not hold them responsible for what had occurred. As far as he was concerned it was all part of God's plan that he be in Egypt in order to sustain the whole family. To take that even one step further, although Yosef may not have been fully aware, God wanted Yaakov and his family to be exiled to Egypt. He chose to send Yaakov to Egypt as the visiting father of a member of the royalty, rather than having Yaakov taken there in captivity. In this respect Yosef's sale to Egypt was primarily to bring about the slavery in Egypt, which was a vital component in the building of the Jewish nation.
There is a Midrashic statement which comments that while Yaakov was busy mourning the loss of Yosef, and Reuven was busy atoning for getting involved in his father's personal life, and Yehudah was dealing with his role in allowing the sale of Yosef, God was busy planning to brining about the Moshiach by facilitating the union between Yehudah and Tamar. But to have Moshiach there had to be a Jewish Nation. That was also part and parcel, and perhaps front and center, of what God was busy doing in the past few Torah portions.
To see the positive and the constructive outcome of being tossed into the pit was the challenge facing Yosef. Later events demonstrate that he passed the test.
I believe that the fact of his being thrown into the pit being in order to take the nation to Egypt is alluded to in the verse describing his being tossed in. The Torah writes והבור רק אין בו מים, and the pit was empty, there was in it no water. There is much written about the apparent redundancy in this verse. If we focus just on the words רק אין בו מים, we can explain it as follows. רק=300 in Gematria (numerical value), אין בו subtract from it מים=90 you are left with 210 the number of years that the Jews were in Egypt.