Pause
Begin by taking a few minutes to breathe deeply.
With each exhale, let go of distractions and cares — see the Spirit as a gentle dove carrying each one into safekeeping.
With each inhale, receive God’s tender care.
Awaken your soul to Advent’s promise: the Lord is here.
Let stillness envelop you as He makes His presence known.
Ponder
“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.”
When I was twelve years old, my teenage sister became pregnant, something I wouldn’t learn about until well into adulthood. When they found out, my parents went to work intent on protecting her reputation and preserving her future. My sister finished out her pregnancy in an unwed mother’s home, where she gave her newborn up for adoption. Having a baby “out of wedlock” simply wasn’t acceptable in 1950s America.
Pregnancy outside of marriage would have been even more reprehensible in first-century Judea, which is why Scripture says Joseph planned to quietly break his engagement with Mary, not wanting to disgrace her publicly.
Joseph seems to be the one character in the Christmas story who gets the least attention. But when you think about it, being the foster father of the Messiah had to have turned that carpenter’s life upside down. Can you imagine the ire and scorn of the village when he decided to wed Mary after an angel told him to do so in a dream?
Joseph, a lowly carpenter, raised Jesus as his own — wrestled with Him and taught Him and fed Him and disciplined Him and tucked Him in at night. When Jesus disappeared as a twelve-year-old in the Temple, Joseph joined Mary in a frantic search, finally finding Him talking earnestly with the religious leaders. Hearing his stepfather’s distress, Jesus simply said, “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” What must Joseph have felt in that moment?
After this, Joseph fades from view. We have no record of the things he may have said or felt or done, or how he died. It almost seems as if he were a strangely silent bystander in the Christmas story.
In truth, Joseph left a profound legacy — not through words, but through acts of quiet obedience. When an angel warned him to leave Bethlehem so that Jesus would not be killed by an evil king, Joseph took his young family to a foreign land with no clear source of income. When God said it was time to return to Israel, Joseph obeyed — but not by going back to his own village. Warned in another dream to avoid Judea, he settled his family in Galilee, unwittingly fulfilling a prophecy about the Messiah.
Joseph clearly loved God enough to relinquish his rights to comfort, career, status, security, and even social identity. Asked again and again to make hard and costly choices, Joseph simply obeyed. Obedience does not always speak — sometimes it simply stands.
So as we approach Christmas, let us look a little more intently at this one whose quiet obedience tells a story all its own. May his life cause us to consider what kind of message our own stories are sending to those who might be watching on any given day. And as we remember this man who stood so humbly at the edges of the Christmas chronicle, may we offer our hearts afresh to the God he served with such abandonment.
Pray
Spend some time meditating on Joseph’s quiet obedience in light of your own life.
Are there small, hidden acts of obedience in your story that few people — or no one at all — know about?
Do you need to hear God whispering to you,
“Well done, good and faithful servant”?
Let God minister to you today. Consider your desire to follow Him even when no one sees or affirms you.
Hear His affirmation of love over your life.
Practice
Look for opportunities to respond with quiet obedience to the Lord as you move through this day. Do what He prompts you to do, even if no one else sees or appreciates it. Rest in the wonder that He is pleased with you, whether or not anyone else ever knows.
The quietest obedience can speak the loudest in heaven.