Joseph

As you may have noticed, I have been extremely lax in my blogging. It's not that we aren't doing anything (quite the opposite), it's just that nothing seems particularly blog-worthy. So in lieu of a new post about us, I thought I'd post a poem I wrote a year or two back. I wrote it after seeing The Nativity Story and thought, since it's seasonal, this would be as good a time as any to post it. I hope you enjoy it...

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A Moment for Joseph
Inspired by the movie The Nativity Story

Joseph
Your name means God will increase
So it makes me wonder
Just what He had to increase in you
To prepare you for your calling
Did He increase your faithfulness
So that you might more readily follow the voices of angels?
Did He increase your goodness
So that you might honor a promise to a disgraced young girl?
Did He increase your self-control
So that you might more calmly bear the laughter of those you once called friend?
Did He increase your patience
So that you might more easily stay in your Egyptian exile?

Or did He increase nothing at all?
Did you find favor with Him just as you were, as Mary did?
We hear so much about Mary
And why she was chosen
But why you?
Why did He choose
A humble Hebrew carpenter
To be the father to the Son of the Most High?

I imagine you often wondered that yourself

What an awesome task set before you
To comfort
To counsel
Perhaps even to discipline
Your very own creator
Why you?
What did He see in you
That He wanted His son to see also?

I like to imagine you
In your woodshop
With Jesus at your side
As you teach him your trade
Letting him watch you
Hold a piece of wood in your hand
While you carve it
Shape it
Change it
And call it good
Maybe that’s precisely what God imagined
When he chose you

Maybe He knew that history would forget you
That no one would record when or even how you died
That you would drop out of the story of Jesus’s life
As abruptly as you were dropped into it
And maybe He knew that you would walk through it all
With grace
And gentleness
And humility
Knowing that you were simply part of something much bigger than yourself

And maybe that’s why
He didn’t forget you
When everyone else did
No, He remembered you
And He gave you the most precious of gifts
The gift of a moment
One single moment in time
When He chose you to be the first person
The very first person
To touch God the Son
The very first person
To hold the Word Made Flesh
In your dusty human hands

And I wonder
What did that moment
Increase in you?