Start each day by reading the passages listed above. Then use the summary and reflection provided here to guide discussion around the daily reading.
Joseph was the husband of Mary and the adoptive earthly father of Jesus. Joseph appears mostly in the narratives surrounding Jesus’s birth and adolescence; the Gospels also tell us that he was the father of several other children through Mary and was a carpenter by trade.
In what ways do you connect or resonate with Joseph’s story?
Joseph’s story resonates with me in that he thought he was going to live life one way but God stepped in and everything changed just like God did in my life. I also understand how that change seemed so much and difficult to understand but God took that situation for him and showed him how good would come from it.
What I love about this story is you can see both Mary and Joseph’s human side. Mary questioned the angel. Joseph was about to leave Mary. They struggled with what God was asking them, as we all would.
They were struggling to understand a plan that from their perspective didn’t make any sense. And they choose that despite their lack of understanding that they would trust God anyway.
Sometimes God asks us to do things that will not make sense. In those moments we need to be like Mary and Joseph. Look at God instead of what we think makes sense. We will struggle, as they did. But if we can push past those struggles and trust God he can use us in incredible ways. Their story reminds me of Naomi, Ruth and Boaz.
Fear didn’t stop Mary and Joseph’s obedience. Instead they kept their eyes on God.
Fear doesn’t have to stop you either. Rather than focus on what is causing your fear, focus on the one who can overcome the storm.
The love and affection between them (Mary &Joseph) mirrors their love for God, for he is fully present in them” While their marriage may look different, it is the most perfect one in human history, because it is free from the “selfishness and urges to control that result from sin”
The relationship of Mary and Joseph reveals God’s intention for marriage: self-sacrificial love in imitation of the perfect love of God.
I think about what it must have been like culturally for a man to find out his espoused is pregnant. The cultural pressure put on him must have been immense. We don’t know what others may have said to him about continuing on with the engagement with Mary. Not everyone was visited by an Angel to explain the situation, but we do know Joseph was faithful. As a man he could have let pride, embaressment, and so many other things get in the way of his faithfulness. How can I relate to Joseph? I don’t have an answer for that, but I do know I have seen him from a new point of view today: the silent doer. Let me be a doer and not just a hearer of the word!
Joseph was a man carefully selected by the Creator to be given the distinct honor of serving as the human father for the Son of God! In a manner consistent with his gentle and humble character, we know very little of the details of his life. But we do know he was a man of great compassion and love, great faith and endurance, and a man well suited to help raise Jesus Christ.