But the angel reassured them, saying, “Don’t be afraid. For I have come to bring you good news, the most joyous news the world has ever heard! And it is for everyone everywhere! Luke 2:10 (TPT)
Angel Voices
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The day she told him she was having a baby, one that was not his, everything changed. I mean, he knew it wasn’t his. They were not yet married. So how could she be…? Should he believe her wild story?
He wrestled with the news, Oh did he wrestle. She was honest and pure. He had trusted her. The news was so shockingly unexpected, he hardly knew what to do with himself. He paced. He prayed. He couldn’t eat. He barely slept. Then one night, when he was finally getting a little sleep, an angel appeared to him in a crazy real-life dream. But what this angel said sent his world into another spin…
He was an uncomplicated man. He had integrity. His hands showed his love for hard work. He was a direct decedent of David, of Abraham. He was a decent, law-abiding, synagogue-attending man who had dreamed of marrying a lovely uncomplicated woman, living in Nazareth, having children whom he could pass the family business onto… Who would he become now? Should he heed the voice of the angel? Or do what the law allowed for any man who’s betrothed fell pregnant to another…
It had been an incredible few months.
The night before last, he knew the baby was coming… She was tired, distracted, excited. She would wander off mid-sentence, stare deeply into the beyond, laugh at the wind…
He was falling in love with her. He had been since the night he told her he would stay. It was the right thing to do, he thought. But then he would watch her walk by, or caress her swollen belly, catch the light in her eyes, see the tears fall from her face… and he was enraptured.
She needed a place to rest and quickly, or else she would have their baby on top of that old and creaky donkey. With the coming census, the village was flooded with people. He went to his families house first… full. To the brim. Then the neighbours house – again, full.
He ran from door to door, knocking, pleading, and at last begging… Her cries grew louder, her grip on that donkey weakened and he frantically searched for a room, any room, any safe place for a woman to deliver a child…
Finally, he found one. Or it found him. He wasn't sure. It was the downstairs stable of a humble family home… they would share it with livestock, a few sheep and goats, but none of that mattered… he didn’t notice the smell of manure hanging in the air or the scratch of hay upon his legs…
He pulled his betrothed from her mount and laid her on a bed of used up straw as the grip of birth beat heavily through her body, thundering within. All he could do was watch, breathe… wait…
Then…
silence.
In his mind right now, the night before, the months before, none of it existed…
All he had was this moment and the perfect tiny gift that was just violently and tremendously released from his mother’s womb and now lay squirming and bloody in his hands.
His newborn son, breathing his first breath. The world hearing his voice for the first time as a tiny, muffled cry.
His son, who was not his son, but completely his son.
As tears of love began to fall down his face and onto the new life he held in his arms, Joseph leaned down and touched his head with the temple of his miracle child and breathed his name onto his cheeks…
“Jesus.”
Written by Liz Milani
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