Joseph was thrust into a situation that threatened to devour his whole world. The most important event he had so eagerly looked forward to — one that could define the rest of his life — was now mutating into a terror with the potential to drag him down into the abyss. The gears of his mind turned at different speeds, grinding and racing all at once, trying to make sense of what was beyond his human understanding. He analyzed, questioned, planned, re-questioned, and re-analyzed. Each time he found half an answer, he tore it down and followed another thread. His thoughts tangled like wires, and it felt as if his mind would either explode or shut down completely.
Yet deep within, at the quiet center of his soul, something stronger kept him steady — an unflinching desire to do not just the right thing, but God’s thing. It wasn’t duty. It wasn’t logic. It was something deeper, unnamed, sitting right at the core of who he was. He had to decide whether he would suffer the pain of betrayal, the pain of disappointment and loss, or the pain of looking like a fool and losing respect in his own eyes and in the eyes of everyone around him. But whatever it was, it was pain — pain that had begun to cast its long, dark shadow over his soul.
He thought. He wrestled. He waited. And within the storm of waiting, he slept — as an act of faith. Perhaps such things had happened to him before, and he had found his go-to position: on the ground, in a sleep of faith — his position of strength, a position he took up time and again where the divine could reach him. You could tell the kind of man Joseph was by this alone: he wasn’t carried away by the mind-boggling facts — that Mary was with child, that her child would be the Messiah, or that he had seen an angel or heard a heavenly voice. He had to find his truth within the divine truth.
When he awoke, he was certain it was the LORD’s will and what it was he was called to do. His whole being began to realign as he moved up. The power he needed for his engine came not from fear or reason, but from purpose. He had seen the unseen future and fixed his attention on it, which in turn gave divine perspective to his past. That’s when the gears of his mind, heart, and soul finally began to move together. He could now set his hand to the plough of the Cross — not as a man trying to fix things, but as a co-worker with God and Mary.
Faith isn’t about commanding the universe or bending life to one’s will. It’s about discovering and trusting Gods will — if you allow it to reveal its purpose — and quietly choosing to move in step with it.