by Sharon O | Dec 6, 2011 | Uncategorized
I have wondered about Joseph.
How he responded to the angels news and how
he reacted towards Mary and her new baby coming.
He thought about it I am sure.
We aren’t told about his feelings or how many sleepless nights he had.
Don’t you wonder what he was thinking when Mary told him,
“Joseph an angel came to me and told me I am expecting a baby and the father is the Holy Spirit.”
Do you wonder how he felt or what he would have said to her?
Did he sit up late in the night trying to decide what he should do?
Did he tell her, “Wow I have to think about this one for a few days.”
This was his fiancee who he was going to marry.
The plans they were making to be a family were not supposed to start so soon.
Was he wondering how he could break it off with her?
Is that when an angel came to talk to him and tell him to marry her?
How life changing it would be for him to be with Mary but not ‘with her’ as a husband and wife.
He was told to take her as his wife even though she was already expecting a new baby.
It was a choice he had to make.
He could have said no but he didn’t.
He chose intimacy not abandonment perhaps even as protection for her.
If he were to marry her
no one would have to know the baby was not his.
Except for the angel who brought the news to both of them
perhaps Joseph and Mary and later Elizabeth were the only ones who knew
the real truth surrounding this special child.
If he were to expose her
the rule of the day was for her to not just be stoned
but stoned in the doorway of her fathers home.
Which also would include her immediate family ‘stoning’ her.
The rule was anyone who was a relative could throw the stones until she died.
Joseph couldn’t let that happen in good conscience.
Perhaps he really loved her?
Not understanding and not knowing how it would affect him for the rest of his life
Joseph obeyed the angel.
He chose obedience not entitlement.
He could have said ‘my first born son will have my family name’.
He didn’t.
The angel said, “you will call him Jesus.”
So many choices within this story.
It is a love story on many levels.
Isn’t that like God to give us many things to think about?
by Sharon O | Dec 3, 2011 | Uncategorized
Can you imagine the feelings Mary had when the Angel appeared to her?
I often talk about life altering moments.
When our world changes in a split second and it is no longer
what we we are familiar with or knew.
I imagine that would be what Mary experienced
when her heart would receive this ‘special child’.
A mother is a mother always and she would be taken to her deepest level of love and loss.
Can you even imagine her fear or her questions
wanting to be obedient
but realizing what it would cost her?
In that culture if she was known to be with child and not married
her destiny would be death by stoning.
Stoning
where one is placed in a pit and killed slowly as rocks are thrown
to break the body down till death takes place.
Perhaps that is why Joseph was told by the Angel to take her as his wife and love her as a husband would love.
Through his obedience he would save her life.
I suppose he could have said no.
The story began when two people said yes I will obey.
It is a love story on many levels.
We forget she was young
scholars have said she was around age 14 just a teenager.
Can you imagine the responsibility for her and the intensity of the call on her life?
In this life altering moment
she was to have a child
he was to be called Jesus
he would deeply change her and also change the hearts of others.
This was indeed one of those moments I think
when we forget the heaviness of her heart where Mary had to make a choice.
God found favor with her and chose her to be the mother of the Christ Child.
We forget who she was before that happened.
Would we be so willing to do something so profound
if we were asked?
by Sharon O | Dec 1, 2011 | Uncategorized
As we begin the season of Christmas traditions
I pray we do not let go of the original story and the original reason Jesus came.
So much to question and so much to share
about the story of Mary and Joseph and the journey
they had to set out on.
With faith and with a strong will and with instructions from an angel they were obedient.
They chose to listen and follow and do what they were told.
The angel told Mary she would have a child and the angel told
Joseph to take Mary as his wife and love this child that was not his own.
What courage and what strength this must have been
for them as a couple.
What an honor it was for them to be a part of the Christmas story.
Forever this story would be told and forever
everyone would know how it all began between
Mary a peasant girl and Joseph a carpenter and the love that grew between them.
The advent of a new birth brought new hope and a new beginning and new love.
Can you even imagine their thoughts?
To be chosen out of all the people around them
to be chosen
by God.
by Sharon O | Dec 1, 2011 | Uncategorized
As November ends and December begins
we rejoice in so many things.
In this month we celebrated our 38th wedding anniversary
and we prayed for more to come.
In this month we learned to be thankful.
We learned to pray deeper and
we learned to be grateful for all things.
We learned to place our trust in someone bigger and wiser than ourselves and
we also learned to release and let go just in case we really had to.
In this month we learned that change takes place in an instant and
time could stand still as we learned to breathe again.
As November ends and December begins
it is with a grateful heart and thankful spirit that we finish this year.
It has been one full of challenges and trials and testing of our faith.
We close this year with a new awareness that life is fragile
and good and challenging
and not to be taken advantage of or thought of lightly.
I pray that we can have closure on all the difficult moments
this year has brought us and
now we can enter into a time of Christmas celebration.
We give God all glory and praise for He has been good to us.
He IS the reason for the Season.
