My family of then-three teenagers and one preteen arrived at a family gathering a few years back. One of my kids sported clothes I was, well, mortified by. I envisioned snatching scissors to snip some wallet chains (wallet chains, people), a hank of hair dangling over a hostile eye.
Yet we were fighting much larger battles. I could have curtailed the wardrobe, but likely at the expense of the rapport needed to enter sacred spaces and help this child navigate inner brokenness.
That is to say, at the expense of truly seeing my child beneath their behavior.
My mother, already in the know, leaned over to me in the kitchen. “Hey. I saw what [insert child] was wearing, and I just wanted to tell you, ‘good job’.” Tears come to my eyes as I type this. She said, “You didn’t pick that battle, and you didn’t need to. Proud of you.”
Bless her sainted heart—not only for seeing my kid’s heart and loving them more than their appearances, but also for seeing mine.
Why is Joseph important in the Christmas story—really?
I’m thinking of this during advent this year. (Stay with me for a minute.) Because I’m observing the guy who’s usually in the background of most nativity scenes, and doesn’t get a lot of airtime in Scripture for a guy on whom a lot of the story quietly hinged.
Yeah, I’m looking at you, Joseph.
As writer, I’m intrigued by the vague strokes of his character sketched in the Bible. Mostly, Joseph does things quietly. He does a lot of obeying and protecting.
We read that he was “a just man and unwilling to put her to shame” (1:19). Or that he “did as the angel of the Lord commanded him” and took Mary as his wife (1:24).
But that’s the thing, right? Joseph, a small-town carpenter, had simply signed up to marry a wholesome local girl.
For all intents and purposes, he was a man betrayed. Shamed. He had no plans, and likely never the desire, to marry a girl pregnant by someone else.
Spoiler: the “someone else” was God.
This Isn’t How I Saw it Going in My Head
But his hometown wasn’t likely to swallow that whole.
Even in modern English, we have a dirty word for kids born out of wedlock, right? Nobody’s going to make you a leader in the local synagogue if your wife “should have” been stoned and you insist it was God who got her in the family way.
Joseph wasn’t hoping to generate nor flee from an infanticide. He likely had no plans to be a refugee, or raising a Jewish child in the middle of Egypt, away from family and community. He’d had no language training that we know of.
He was a good guy who didn’t deserve to have his name drug through the dirt, or later used as a reason Jesus couldn’t possibly be Israel’s Messiah.
Here’s what I appreciate about Joseph this year. Joseph hung in there and believed God. He did the hard, embarrassing work of love.
Joseph did what was right when it looked wrong. He took one on the chin to do what was truly faithful and obedient. Not just what made him look like a stand-up guy.
Joseph obeyed God when it cost him. And in doing so, he ushered in the Savior of the world.
(My meditation on this is spurred on by my favorite Christmas song this year, Chris Renzema’s “Mary & Joseph.” If you have a couple of quiet minutes, give it a listen.)
Your “Joseph” Moment
Maybe God’s asking you, too, to follow him or love someone in a way people don’t understand.
You’re open to reason and the counsel of others (Proverbs 11:14, James 3:17). But you also know the difference between what looks good and what is genuinely good and God-pleasing.
Maybe it’s loving that kid with an attachment disorder, or oppositional defiant disorder. Or it’s finding a path back to healing from your broken marriage. Maybe it’s providing wise, thoughtful love to someone who’s already hurt you once. Or more than 70 x 7 (Matthew 18:21-22).
Maybe to the rest of the world you look like a doormat, a pushover. The closer I look at God’s love, at the Cross, love sometimes looks…gross. Shameful. Dead-end. Bloody, even.
(I’m not pushing for love without healthy boundaries. Check out Love Says No: How Boundaries Express True Care, Part I.)
As a parent, there’ve been so very many searing moments I retraced my steps. How did things go wrong? Maybe I (maybe God? I wondered) had made a mistake. Doubt trundled in, gray, heavy, and thick. The pain and cost pelted and stung.
Love wouldn’t make me this hurt or furious or disoriented, right? It couldn’t resemble such staggering failure or holes punched into my future or my kids’.
Surely love couldn’t couple itself with unspeakable grief.
But doesn’t that describe God’s role with his kids, tumbling ultimately toward the cross? Weren’t they ignorant, outright rebellious, unfaithful, and unseeing in the face of sheer love?
God’s Son, too, would be
despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not…
we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted. (Isaiah 53:3-4)
This Christmas, I’m looking closer at Joseph—and ultimately, Jesus. I want their willingness to love when it’s hard.
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