Advent 2 - Joseph's doubt

Joseph is betrothed to Mary, but she is pregnant with God’s son.  She can no longer hide the shape of her expanding belly, and he must also endure the shunning and shaming by the very community who have known them since they were children playing in the heat and dust.

How can he be expected to believe such a story? 

And yet...dear Mary, a liar? 

He has grown up with the Scriptures - knows the stories of the Torah back to front.  Familiar with the ways of God as told by his people, nor a stranger to the unusual and often complex relationship between man and His Creator, Joseph faces a dilemma. Before him lies a decision bigger than anything he has ever had to consider..  

And yet? .. ’The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel’… (Isaiah 7:14)

Doubt and faith held in tension. Wanting so badly to believe her but, at the same time, it just doesn't make sense.. can’t be.

We have all been there in our own unique ways, pulled by our culture and by the world, and yet pushed, gently, always gently, by the spirit of God towards faith and belief that it might just be so. It’s so risky, isn’t it, to rest in the promises of God, to resist the temptation to doubt that He really will provide, really will protect, really will show up, that this is really Him?

And yet…?’God is not a man, that He should lie’  (Numbers 23:19)

Joseph had a choice to make. 

Two thousand years later, we too are making choices. Will I choose to believe even when it doesn't make sense and I don't understand how this will all end? Or will respectability and ‘common sense’ be the safer, easier route? We can always defend ourselves, can’t we, by doing what’s right…?

I believe that Joseph cared deeply about the decision he was making - I believe he wrestled with God as he searched for answers, and then, he met an angel.

Thanks to Josh Applegate (Unsplash.com) for the photo.