Reflection
Thankfully, despite the difficulty of the news that Mary shared, Joseph took time to consider what he should do. In the time that Joseph took to consider his options, God interrupted his thinking with another way. As considered and creative as Joseph may have been in his waking deliberations, as clever in his daytime logic, the Lord used the space of dreams and visions to break into Joseph’s thinking, in order to forge a different path, a path that held the quest for obedience to the law and the quest for grace even more tightly together.
There in that small space of a dream, God, through his messenger, told Joseph to take Mary as his wife, and to name her son (a father’s right). This son would be the person in whom justice and mercy meet. Immanuel, God with us, who would save his people from their sins. Mercy and justice.
Joseph obeyed God, and in so doing, became a part of how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. In his trust in God, and his obedience to him, Joseph was given the precious and once-in-forever honour of naming the Son of God. And he gave him the name Jesus.
God’s plans don’t always match what we would plan. But they are infinitely better and more considered than anything we could ever come up with.
Prayer
Dear Lord, you teach us through your word that the benefits of obedience to you far surpass any honour we could patch together for ourselves. Help up to obey you. Amen.