A Joyfully Shocking Response

 
"An angel of the LORD appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid...'" — Matthew 1:20

His head has been spinning over how his wife somehow got pregnant without being with a man (yeah, right), never mind him. He loves his wife deeply and wants to believe her, but... He's stressed over what his family will think and say, and whether they might even disown him, and what might happen to his carpentry trade. He has no answers that make any sense to give anyone, including himself. And that's only the immediate issues. If Joseph, husband of Mary and earthly dad to Jesus, only knew what was ahead: no warm and comfortable place for his wife to give birth, the unspeakable fear of a terrorist-type king wanting to kill his son and all others in his age group, running for their very lives, and in the dark, to a strange place where they know no one, and then more running back home, well sort of, due to one more fear-inspired detour, this time to Nazareth where they would finally, finally settle down...

Joseph may not get all the attention the songwriters have given to Mary, the shepherds (and even their sheep), and wise men bearing unusual holiday gifts. But it's hard to imagine where we would be right now without Joseph's hard-to-swallow "Yes, Lord" response to several angelic visitations. He could have said, "I just can't do this." But God must have known something about what drove Joseph when the pressure is on, and so He stuck with him. In fact, Joseph is like that seemingly minor character at the beginning of the movie on whom the plot later turns, resulting in a fantastic ending for all that few saw coming:

"When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him...he took his wife,  but knew her not until she had given birth to a son.
 And he called his name Jesus."

How does a guy get to "Yes" when everything within him was screaming "No way!" ? The clue to Joseph's joyfully shocking response, and our own hope in the midst of life's stresses, may be in which identity he chose to believe most about himself. In the flesh, as Matthew noted a few verses earlier, he is the son of Jacob — a presumably much-loved dad, but, like all others before and after, didn't hit it out of the park every single time, try as he might. The angel, however, spoke something even better into Joseph's life: he reminded him of his perfect identity as a son of a King's lineage and of a child of a perfect God who makes promises that cannot be broken. And so just maybe, when all was spinning and nothing was making sense, Joseph remembered this as the angel called him by his new ID:

"Once for all I have sworn by my holiness — and I will not lie to David — that his line will continue forever and his throne endure before Me like the sun; it will be established forever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky." — Psalm 89:35-37

And to every one of us facing our own pressures and decisions of life more than 2,000 years later, the timeless angelic message of trust and true identity that was spoken into the life of an under-appreciated Nativity character repeats the sounding joy:

"Others might, in fact, others will, but I haven't failed yet, nor will I ever. Nothing may make sense right now. But trust Me on this one, and on all of the ones to come. I've got this. Better still, I've got you. And the safest move you can ever make is to stand on My unshakeable promises.... So, what do you say?"