I just can’t stop thinking about what it must have been like to be Joseph, the man pledged to be married to the pregnant virgin Mary. Would you have believed that story if she told you? I know, Joseph had a visit from the angel Gabriel as Mary had, but this was so far outside the bounds of believability. When had a virgin ever conceived? It was impossible.

 If I were Joseph, I think I might have asked myself: What’s the difference between Gabriel speaking to me in a dream and dreaming that Gabriel spoke to me? Couldn’t the stress of Mary’s announcement have created mental confusion? Was it really God’s angel or a hallucination?

 We now know how the story turned out: Jesus did, indeed, turn out to be the one the angel had announced. He healed the sick, raised the dead, preached the Kingdom of God, astounded Jewish leadership, was crucified, and then rose the third day as He had said He would. His followers, dying for the risen Christ by the dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, eventually convinced the emperor Constantine that he couldn’t beat them so he joined them.

That’s the history; we know all that now. But Joseph didn’t know. How was he able to believe? Mary knew she had not been with a man, but Joseph had only Mary’s word and the dream.

One clear lesson that I take from Joseph’s story is that faith is something different than simply studying the available evidence and following the logical conclusion. If Joseph had followed logic, he would have gone ahead and divorced Mary.

But this does not mean that Joseph had an illogical mind. Albert Einstein—no slouch in the logical mind category—once said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Thoughtful, reasonable people understand that there are experiences that transcend logic, and that those may be the most valuable experiences of all.

The most courageous decisions are sometimes the ones that cause a person to believe when evidence is not overwhelming, but is nevertheless compelling. It’s belief you cannot completely explain, but from which you cannot escape. Joseph concluded that, even though he couldn’t count up the evidence in a way that met the requirements of ironclad logic, this was something that counted—and counted supremely.

As I view history from my 21st century vantage point, I can’t escape the conclusion that Jesus was—is—indeed the Messiah. The evidence now—after the fact—is, I think, overwhelming. But Joseph’s courageous faith before the baby Jesus was born—that astounds me.

One verse of a carol goes like this:

And our eyes at last shall see Him,
      Through His own redeeming love;
      For that Child so dear and gentle
      Is our Lord in heaven above;
      And He leads His children on
      To the place where He is gone.*

I don’t think believing that is nearly as tough as believing what Joseph was called upon to believe. Still, it too transcends logic. It too calls for a step beyond ironclad evidence. It too calls, in a sense, for Joseph-like faith.

B.W.

* “Once in Royal David’s City” by Cecil Frances Alexander