What's Up Joseph?

Michael Card does a song called, Joseph's Song and it is so beautiful.  I feel sorry for Joseph because he seems to be forgotten in this big story.  Yet, Joseph is another character in this play of life that I have often wondered about.  What did he feel when Mary came and told him what was happening?  What did he think when the angel visited him and explained the situation?   What was it like to be Jesus' step-dad?  How did he feel in his supporting role of this cast of characters?  I was thinking about this on Friday while my students were taking a test and decided that Joseph must have felt something like this...Why did this happen to me? Ask anybody in town, they’ll tell you I’m a pretty good guy. I work hard for a living running my family’s carpentry business. I got engaged to a nice girl from a nice family. Everything was going great until I found out she was pregnant. It just didn’t make sense. That wasn’t like the Mary I knew. A girl with a family as great as hers  just doesn’t do that kind of thing. Then she came and told me this unbelievable story about an angel and the Messiah and how we were part of God’s great plan. My first reaction was, "Come On!"  I truly would have thought she had gone crazy but it sounded like even she was having a hard time believing what she was telling me, like it was the truth but it was so painful she could barely get it out.
 
Now, I know the laws of Moses. A woman who commits adultery is to be publicly stoned to death for the shame she has brought on her family. I loved her.  I didn’t want to see that happen to her. Her family had suffered enough because of this. So I was going to break things off quietly and help save face.  It was about that time when the angel came and spoke to me. I thought I was going crazy. But the angel said that everything Mary told me was true—that this baby was really the Messiah and we were charged with his care. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a religious man. I believe that all the promises God made to our people will be fulfilled one day. I just didn’t expect it to look like this. No one I’ve told about this has believed me. If God was going to do these things in such a weird way, don’t you think God would have let everyone else know? Wouldn’t God at least have told the religious leaders? They’re the ones who are supposed to know what God is thinking. But instead it’s up to me, a simple carpenter, and my new wife to care for this baby as if he were my son. I have no idea what will happen with this boy. But deep down inside, somehow I know everything will be alright. Somehow God will make it all work out.