This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. .When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
Holy Ground
If you've read "Ethan's Story" in my book, Made to Matter: Devotionals for Working Christians, you know the miraculous story of our son's birth. For a time it looked as if both mother and baby wouldn't survive, but within hours my wife's condition stabilized, leaving only Ethan's life in doubt.
Hour upon hour I sat next to Ethan's isolette in the neonatal intensive care unit, singing softly to keep him company. Around us were dozens of other newborns, each engaged in their own desperate struggle to live. I took heart from the parents receiving good reports from the nurses, while trying not to hear the heart-wrenching sobs coming from the family room adjoining the unit. For three days Ethan fought the battle doctors said he almost certainly couldn't win, and on that third day he turned the corner that made it possible for me to watch him today, at 16, learning to drive our family van.
Rarely a day passes when I don't think back to those first 72 hours, reflecting on the joy of watching our son live life and know God. Each year since then, when I read the Christmas story, I'm attracted with special affinity to Joseph, the man God chose to raise Jesus as an earthly parent. What faith; what character; must have been his, to be selected to raise the King of Kings. What courage, to stand against the whispers and not put Mary away when he discovered she was pregnant before marriage. What unselfishness, to delay consummating his marriage to Mary until Jesus was born. What love, to disrupt all that was comforting and safe to take this Child that wasn't his and go live in a land that wasn't home so he could keep the Baby safe. A bit player in the recorded drama recounted in Scripture, Joseph was anything but a bit player in real life.
So it is with each of you. While history may never write you into its pages, you are writing yourself into the lives of everyone around you. The home you raise your children in is holy ground; the way your children see you as parents is how they see God. Loving parents help their kids see God as loving; distant parents teach their kids that God is distant; and so on. Modern dads often miss this, mistaking provision as their primary role, despite the fact Scripture speaks more than fifty times about their need to teach their children about God, while only mentioning in three or four places about providing for them.
It's not just the home that's holy ground. So, too, is the factory floor or office cubicle or tractor-trailer cab or mine shaft; each place serving as the backdrop against which God asks you to serve Him. How we reflect His nature and impact on us while doing our jobs is our daily testimony to Him. And remember, work is not merely another strategy for evangelizing; God created and blessed work as an integral part of His relationship with us. Doing your job each day glorifies and pleases Him.
By the time Jesus' earthly ministry begins, Joseph is no longer alive. Sitting by Ethan's isolette those many years ago, I think I learned why. There wasn't---isn't---anything I wouldn't do to protect my son; no danger from which I wouldn't shield him. Surely God knew this of Joseph, too, and took him home before he would have to witness the taunts and ultimate crucifixion of his adopted son Jesus.
Joseph's mission was the daily kind, teaching Jesus how to live and labor; helping Him face the temptations He came to earth to experience, equipping Him for the work before Him. None of us are unimportant to God; none of us are without purpose or value. Even if we can no longer labor as we once did, we find purpose each day by the impact we have on the people God puts there to learn from us as we live and love and labor.
This Christmas, find your way back to the Manger; and in that moment, ask God to change you so each day what you show your family and your friends and coworkers is a vision of who God is, the God of love and comfort and order and meaning.
No soul yearns to see Him more than those watching you right now. Be their guide to the Savior.
--Randy Kilgore
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