Matthew 1:24- Then Joseph woke up. He did exactly what God’s angel commanded in the dream: He married Mary. (The Message Bible)
As I write this there is less than 48 hours until Christmas. It still feels like I have a ton to things to do. There are a lot of expectations surrounding the way we celebrate Christmas- presents (what to buy and for whom to buy them), meals (we always have….), cards, letters and phone calls (and emails and text messages and skype). I’d like to squeeze a time of worship in there also. In the information age we have quite a bit more knowledge than we have time or energy, mental or physical, to process. It’s not so much what you know anymore as which pieces of knowledge we actually consider important enough to act on. There might very well have not have been Christmas at all if Joseph would have shrugged off his encounter with the angel as a weird projection of his wishful thinking and continued on with plan A of divorcing Mary. And so this is Christmas sings John Lennon, and what have you done? Well I’ve done a lot, but not much of it has to do with connecting with the God with us that came as a baby that first Christmas. How about you? There is still time.