Act of God
Sacrificing everything to do the right thing can be life-changing.
Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. - Matthew 1:19
Matthew takes us back to the beginning. Before Jesus is born, Joseph has a problem. His wife is pregnant.
Once a man took a woman as his wife, they would stay apart for a year. Everyone could bear witness to the fact that the woman was a virgin, for she did not get pregnant and bear a child in that time.
But after Joseph committed to Mary, she became pregnant and the child was not his.
There are not too many men these days who would stay around, and some might leave even if the child was theirs. So, this is a big life-changer. He needed help with this one.
He was convinced in a dream that the child was from God and Mary was not to be abandoned. No one would know, only Joseph and Mary, so the problem was his. All would assume he was the father and he hadn't waited.
We don't know much about the actual wedding ceremony. Perhaps there was none. We believe Joseph to be older and we read that Mary traveled to her cousin to stay, so getting out of sight and out of mind was probably a good thing.
He sacrificed his standing in the community to do God's will, and yet no one would know that was the reason.
We can hear this story and say that Joseph did the right thing. We can even praise him for his courage, but what if God did not send the angel to talk to him in a dream? Would Mary have been able to convince him that she was innocent of adultery?
When we look at it that way, we have to ask, is there that much trust and faith between husband and wife?
Jesus gives us a way to come together when we have sinned. He tells us to confess, be truly repentant and to forgive. But what if we haven't sinned against another?
In Mary's case, she would have told Joseph the truth, sore to him that she was not crazy of a liar, and he should have believed her.
But that doesn't always work.
Joseph was ready to divorce Mary. Until he had a vision, he was out of there. So, what does that say about our commitment to each other and our trust in each other?
This is actually a very disturbing story if you think about it. God created the problem when He intervened and then God had to intervene again to correct it, and in the process, two lives were changed forever.
I guess there is a lesson here.
If our lives are changed by some "Act of God" the one we must turn to for help is that same God.
We cannot do it alone, can we?
More to come...
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