Read Matthew 1:24-25
I CAN STILL REMEMBER our first trip home as a family after my daughter was born. I don’t know that I had ever driven as safely or as slowly as I did when we left the hospital. We had been anticipating this moment for nearly a year, but for all the appointments and books and classes and redecorating, nothing prepared me for the sudden and colossal change I had undergone. I was now a father. The safety net of the hospital was disappearing in the rearview mirror, and each creaking mile took me further into an entirely new reality.
The complicated thing about parenting is that you receive an identity change before you really know what to do with it. I became a father when I first heard my daughter cry. She’s 10 now, and in so many ways I am still becoming her father. What might have felt akin to impostor syndrome early on has shifted into an indelible piece of who I am. Faithfulness through success and failure has yielded the fruit of that change.
I think about this experience often when I read about Joseph. Matthew describes him as a righteous man, who prioritized care for his betrothed and obedience to the law of Moses. When he sees that Mary is pregnant, before they were married and could conceive, his response indicates that he holds his righteousness even above his heartache, as he likely suspects infidelity. But as he moves toward a quiet divorce, saving Mary public shame, a messenger of God intervenes as Joseph is dreaming one night. The child in Mary’s womb is the work of the Holy Spirit, he is told, and this son will save God’s people from their sins. The dream ends, and Joseph rises to a new identity and with it, a new world. He might have gone to bed a heartbroken man, but he wakes up a committed husband and father.
Mary’s experience is the focal point of the other three gospel accounts, and they provide a vivid depiction of what it looks like for her to faithfully respond to the word of God. Our experience with the Holy Spirit operates on a similar trajectory. We are forever changed by grace at the core of who we are, and the new life inside of us is to be displayed as a tangible testimony. We nurture and care for what is within so that it might go out to serve the world around us.
In Matthew’s gospel, Joseph presents us with a different vantage point. While Mary nurtured life toward its external revelation, Joseph is called as a father to witness something outside of himself that will one day occupy the center of his heart.
After the message in his dream, Joseph’s whole life became an expression of waiting. The promise from God’s messenger carried no details or dates. Joseph is to be Jesus’ earthly father, but his choice to receive that calling is less a one-time acceptance and more a daily choice to follow through with his new identity and the responsibilities it entails.
I will not attempt to speak for the Bible in its silence, but we know the realities of parenting that Joseph would have experienced. We can faithfully imagine his heart swelling as he heard Jesus’ first words. We can picture Joseph hurting with Jesus, as the Son wept over his first cut or scrape. Joseph, righteous and obedient, called to fatherhood in a dream, was surely learning to be a father as he watched Jesus dream peacefully in his sleep. This humble man who followed behind a toddler clumsily racing through his home will one day follow proudly behind a triumphant, risen king.
Advent shows us there is a burden and a beauty after awakening. Those who have seen a great light carry a responsibility to steward new life. But what is within us is at work around us, too. All things are indeed being made new. Joseph teaches us that those who wait will also witness.
Caleb Saenz is lead pastor of The Garden, a church planted in San Antonio in 2023.
This article is part of A Time for Wonder, a 4-week devotional to help individuals, small groups, and families journey through the 2024 Advent season. Learn more about this special issue that can be used Advent, or any time of year at http://orderct.com/advent.
