I was amazed. I was having a cup of coffee with a person I know who’d called to tell me it looked like their marriage would be ending in divorce. It wasn’t what this person wanted, and they were hoping I might have some wisdom. I, on the other hand, felt totally inadequate, and was hoping the Holy Spirit would be the light and wisdom that I could never be.
It turns out, that was true. I won’t share the details here, but I’d been through the exact same bit of crazy that my friend was going through. And I mean eerily similar details. The kind where you think, “God must have brought us together…if for no other reason than so this child of God sitting in front of me can experience being heard and understood.” There was no way it was me who gets credit for how the Holy Spirit brought my friend this comfort.
My amazement was that this acquaintance was, in a real sense, living out the love of God – loving not because of awesomeness, but loving despite the brokenness. Taking the high road. Kinda like Jesus came to do on that original Christmas morning.
Another thing that always amazes me is that Christianity is so real. A lot heroes of the faith did some total nincompoopery – from Abraham giving away his wife (twice!) to David having a guy killed after getting the dude’s wife pregnant to Peter whimperingly denying Jesus over and over.
But not Joseph. You remember the story we read at Christmas time. He finds out Mary is pregnant and, well, he’s a dude. A) He knows how these things happen and B) he knows it wasn’t him. And listen to how Matthew describes it in chapter 1, verse 18:
So her husband Joseph, being a righteous man, and not wanting to disgrace her publicly, decided to divorce her secretly. Matthew 1:19, CSB
This isn’t exactly the part of the story that gets emphasized in the Christmas story. They were engaged, and in Jewish culture that was the same as marriage in that Mary ending up preggo was not a good thing. Oh, what was that old Jewish law about what happens to an adulterer? A stoning!
But Joseph doesn’t want her to be disgraced. He takes the high road. He didn’t whine about not getting his needs met or how it wasn’t fair. He takes the high road.
Now get this:
The Bible calls Joseph a righteous man. It didn’t mean He was perfect in every, but recall that this story comes before an angel shows up and tells him to go ahead and marry Mary. Joseph’s response: okay God, you’re God, and I’m not. I will follow you even when it doesn’t make sense.
And all that is so not what we see go by on Facebook where we see people unfriending people because they share a different political view. And it makes you think…
Part of what Jesus came to do was live a sinless life. But He experienced every hurt that we did and more. He doesn’t divorce us when we’re unfaithful to Him, so can you imagine Him dumping a friend on Facebook over a difference of opinion?
Connect the dots, my friends. People will be baffled when you love and live like Jesus. They’ll scratch their heads when you take the high road. You want the real Spirit of Christmas? May we, as we hear the Christmas story again, pray for the wisdom and strength that only comes by the power of His Spirit.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in communications, an award-winning author and speaker, and a passionately bad guitarist. ForTheHope equips on-the-go professionals with biblical principles to engage marketplace relationships with competent humility. On Twitter can follow him @RogerCourville and/or his podcast @JoinForTheHope, or get all updates by email subscription at www.forthehope.org.