JOSEPH HAD A DREAM

He sure did.  It's not the one you think it is.  It is rather strange that after all these years I dare to think of Joseph having dreams just like any other guy who is engaged to be married.  It came to me when I got the email that had the digital Nativity story link.  It is so real, that it carried me to when I was thinking of getting married. I now know what I never knew before, not first hand, anyway.
Imagine being engaged and getting told by your intended that she is pregnant.  Imagine what would happen to your dreams in that moment. Worse for Joseph, he gets an actual dream that cuts in front of his own dreams.  We are told that this reassures him.  Huh?  What would he have been thinking?  What about the family he had perhaps already "built" in his own dreams?  He had to know his genealogy, so he had to have some hopes for a comfortable future with a family fitting to his ancestry.  Don't you think he must have  had to really love the commoner to whom he was engaged?  And now, this!
We grow up with this story.  I am amazed at the dept and the variety of understandings that grow in my mind and heart every year based on this family.  It took a long time for me to come to this level of appreciation for the dreams that Joseph must have had now that he had found this great lady for himself.  He must have shared them with her and she must have been spending a lot of nights and time during the day dreaming about the future as well.  The part of the digital story that got to me (OK, one of the parts) was the tweet about, "Joseph, we have to talk."  This is so true to life.  It so close to home.
I can't help but feel this way I guess, because I went through some of this stuff at that crucial time of my life when dreams that once were mine, were now no longer mine.  I went through a moment of wondering if the dreams that I seen through to reality had ever been really mine.  I see them now as having been only partially mine and I never, somehow, never really realized how much they were mine and how much they were Ours.  I am now convinced that, like Joseph, there comes a time when we have to see a more complete picture and we can really only do that at a moment when we are open to the Presence that really matters.  We get that moment when we get the message, "We really have to talk."
So, just like Joseph and Mary, we must believe that it is from above that our dreams reach us.  It is from above that our lives are shaped.  So, Joseph and Mary had their good times and their tough ones.  It must have been interesting having a child like this one.  It must have been interesting having only the One in a society where most families had more than one.  No doubt Joseph must have felt that too.
Oh, well, so much for that strange little Christmas thought.  Now click here and enjoy the digital story one more time.