When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. Matthew 1:24 (NLT)
Engaged! I can’t believe I am engaged to Mary. God has truly blessed me. All of our friends and family are so happy for us. The entire village is ready to celebrate our union together. This is going to be the beginning of a great life!
Until. Until Mary told him she was pregnant. Until she tried to claim this was not her doing. Until she blamed it on God. What was she thinking? Did she honestly think he was that naive? She certainly wasn’t the woman he thought she was.
What was he going to do? He could make a lesson out of her lies. He could bring her before the Village Elders and make sure everyone knew that he did not do this. There was a knot in his stomach as he tried to process the circumstances that just turned his life upside down.
And oh how he prayed. He prayed that God would show him the best way to get out of this relationship. There was nothing in this mess that could be redeemed. He decided to quietly move on. No disgrace for anyone. Just cut the ties and move on.
As he lay down that night to sleep, Joseph tossed and turned. The weight of the decision he made weighed heavily on him. He was deeply troubled.
When he woke up the next morning, he remembered the dream. An angel came and told him to marry Mary. The angel said that what she said was true and that God was in the middle of this seemingly impossible situation. Joseph did what God asked him to do. He took Mary as his wife and became Jesus’ earthly father.
What do you think it would take to have that kind of relationship with God? The kind where you see the human side of things but follow the completely non-logical path like Joseph did. We might wake up after that dream and think we ate something bad the night before. We’d be discounting God. When God wants to get a point across to us, he’s not going to leave it up to our human faculties. It will be clear. And I think this does happen….more often than we think.
The question then becomes, are we going to follow?