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?
