What if God had chosen to not send His Son to die for us a little over 2000 years ago? What if He chose to wait until August 1, 2011 to send the Savior? What if we did not have the Bible to teach us about God? What if the names Jesus and Christ were not yet one? What if the Church did not exist? How would your life be different? All of those things are possible because God could easily have had a different timetable for history.
Now, take this scenario a step further and make it deeply personal, painfully intimate and by all we know impossible. What if your teenage daughter came to you tomorrow morning and said an angel came to her in the night and told her that God had made her pregnant. What would you say? And when she topped that fanciful tale by saying her child was God Himself, what would you do?
We do not have much information about Joseph, Jesus' adoptive father, but we do know quite a bit about what kind of man he was from the story of how he dealt with his virgin wife being pregnant. Under Jewish law, he had the right to stone her. But he chose not to. For a time he thought he would quietly divorce her, but he did not. What did he do? He followed through with his commitment and married her.
Easy 21st Century morality probably makes it impossible for us to understand really how hard that was for Joseph. The shame of Mary’s apparent situation was deep and bitter. The patriarchal pressure of the day demanded he redeem his honor and Mary’s future was in serious doubt. I think how he stood up to the pressure and married his young betrothed is lesson for us in what it takes to be a man or woman of God.
First, commitment was ingrained in him, promises were integral to his self-image and his word was his bond. In his mind, he was what he said. And shame was sure to follow if he did not live up to it.
Second, he was in tune with God. I strongly doubt God would have chosen to pair the righteous, humble mother of His son with an unrighteous, ungodly man. So Joseph was in tune with God before he faced the challenge of Mary’s pregnancy. So when God came to him in the dream he was prepared to follow without question.
He was a righteous and humble man of God who was willing to listen to that “still small voice.”
I pray that I, we, you, are in tune with God and have the commitment Joseph had to follow through. We so easily make promises today, only to break them due to emergencies, busy schedules, and changing circumstances. There is much for us to learn about life, ourselves and God, simply by following through. We short circuit so many teaching moments when we bail on commitments. And with God as our teacher, who knows what might have been, had we just kept that promise.
Joseph’s life was surely blessed by God because he had the humility to listen and the fortitude to keep his promises and follow through. May your life be as blessed.
