He's With Us While We Wait

 Have you ever looked up at the sky and it was almost green? Clouds, dark and swirling, hover on the horizon and you're absolutely certain - there's a storm a brewin'! 

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).  Matthew 1:22-23

 You’ve got to figure one of the first things on Mary’s mind when she heard from the angel and then found herself to be pregnant as she had been told, was, “What will Joseph think?” Their culture was not like ours today. If an unmarried woman becomes pregnant today, people hardly bat an eye. Yes, there might be some judgement or condemnation from uber conservative people around them, but for the most part people will think nothing of it. In Mary’s day, a woman could be stoned to death if she was found to be unmarried and pregnant. At the very least, her upcoming marriage, for which she was already betrothed, would be dissolved. In fact, she may never be married with this blot on her history. These thoughts/worries/concerns had to float around in her head. Maybe they even kept her up at night, but the Bible doesn’t mention her experience with it. The person it does tell about is Joseph.

 Somehow Joseph got the news that Mary was with child, and he knew it was not his. The Bible doesn’t say whether Mary told him, or he heard about it second hand. It also doesn’t say at what stage of Mary’s pregnancy this took place. Maybe whispers were going around town and someone finally thought it wise to share with him. Maybe a cruel neighbor dropped it on him just to get a thrill out of witnessing his reaction – I’ve had that happen to me. Maybe Mary told him herself, or he figured it out when he saw her growing belly. A full range of emotions must have come over him when he learned that Mary was pregnant. Hurt, anger, confusion. How could she do this to him? Why would she do this to him? And then, he had to face his response to it all. Could he go through with a marriage to a woman who had obviously been with someone else? Could he raise another man’s child as his own? And if she was the one who had informed him and she shared the full story of the angel and that the child she carried was God’s Son, there would be a whole other set of reactions. Could he believe her? The story was wild! Was it possible?

 I’ve been in a few situations in my life that were heavy with questions and the pressure of the unknown was palpable. The first one that comes to mind is when I received the news that I had a brain tumor. While many would consider the 10 days it took to get in to see the surgeon as quick, those ten days felt like an eternity! I researched the little I knew on the internet, which gave me more information but didn’t calm my nerves at all. I prayed. I talked about it with my husband, who was the only one I was sharing the information with at the time. But you can be certain that not a moment went by over those 10 days where the thought, “I have a brain tumor!” wasn’t lingering in the back of my head.

 We don’t know how much time passed between when Joseph learned of Mary’s pregnancy and when he had the dream God sent to him. It does say that an angel appeared to him in a dream after he had contemplated divorcing Mary quietly. Was this the same night? A week later? A month? We don’t know, but what I’m fairly certain of is that, like my experience, not a moment went by between when Joseph learned about Mary’s pregnancy and when he encountered the angel in his dream that the thought, “Mary is pregnant,” didn’t echo in his mind. News like this is a catalyst. It creates a hinge point in our lives: before and after we knew. It ushers in a period of waiting.

 Waiting. That season between when we get the news and when we figure out what to do with it. It’s intense. It’s hard. It’s something none of us look forward to. Amanda Cook has a song that has ministered to me deeply during these seasons (I’ll attach it below). In it she reminds us that God is with us while we wait, while we hope for better days. In most instances there is little we can do to shorten this period of time, we just have to live through it, and praise God, we don’t have to do it alone!

 God speaks to each of us in different ways, in the way we will best receive it. To Mary, God sent an angel to speak to her, presumably during the day, in person. To Joseph, He sent an angel to speak to him in a dream. This seems to be Joseph’s spiritual language as God used it again a couple of years later to warn him about the danger to his family from King Herod (Matthew 2:13-15). Me? I often get impressions on my spirit. An idea of something that has exceptional weight to it. It might be an answer to a question I’ve posed to God, or it might come out of the blue. Sometimes it will be a burden to pray for a specific person or situation, and I may not even know why. I’ve had it come when I was looking for something and a place I hadn’t considered pops into my mind. It might even have to do with a problem I’m facing or communication challenge I’m having. In any case, a thought comes to mind and it is often accompanied by a gentle weight on my chest, as if what I’m thinking has importance. I think God does this with me because I’m so prone to a dozen swirling thoughts that often float out of my mind before they even land solidly. He knows I need a trigger to draw my attention to what He’s trying to tell me. I’ve told people before, I won’t say specifically that God is telling me something because there are a lot of cautions in the Bible about saying that when you aren’t 100% sure, but when I know, I know.

Here's the Thing: My heart today wasn’t on how God spoke to Joseph, but on the period of time before He did. Today I feel a kinship with Joseph in the difficulty he must have faced in this situation. Odds are pretty high that he didn’t find out about Mary’s pregnancy and fall directly into sleep where God spoke to him in a dream. There was time in between the two events. Whether that was hours, days, or weeks, you’ve got to imagine that it was very difficult. I’m so glad that God is with us in these seasons, He’s with us While We Wait,