Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent
A little more than a decade ago, I applied for a faculty position at the University of Dayton. At the time, I knew that the competition for it would be very stiff. Faculty jobs were then (and remain today) a “buyer’s market”—that is, there were far fewer available teaching positions at universities than there were highly qualified people to fill them. Amazingly, I managed to get an interview. I felt good about the interview but, of course, I had no idea who my competition was or how fabulous they might have been in their interviews. Waiting to hear whether I got the job was tough. It got a lot tougher as the weeks went by. I don’t remember anymore how many weeks it was exactly. What I do remember was that there were enough of them that I knew the job had been offered to someone else. I didn’t get it. That was really tough, because I really, really wanted that job.
Early in the story from Matthew today, Joseph is dealing with the really bad news that the woman to whom he is betrothed is pregnant, and most certainly not by him. In the culture of Joseph’s day that was, to put it bluntly, a deal breaker. Being a kind man who knew he could not be married to this woman, he made a plan to divorce her in secret. It was probably the best thing he could do, given the circumstances. He must have been so broken hearted since all of his hopes for his new family were dashed. He probably thought, too, that in time people would know what transpired. He must have anticipated the shame he knew would come.
And then he gets this word in a dream from an angel—you’ve got it all wrong, Joseph! Rather than bring shame upon you, Mary will be bringing God to us! What he thought was probably the worst thing that ever happened to him turned out to be the best thing. And not just for him but for the whole world. What is so truly wonderful in this story is that when Joseph woke up from his dream, he acted in absolute faith. He believed the word he had received and brought Mary into his home.
My cell phone rang, and I answered it. I’ll never forget where I was standing when I processed what the person was saying on the other end of the line. She was offering me the job. Huh? While I’m trying to figure out how this is possible she is reviewing the terms of the hire and asking whether I am amenable to them. Huh? Amenable? I was ecstatic!
Have you ever been absolutely thrilled to be dead wrong about something you didn’t just think was true but knew was true?
Truth be told, we like to think we know what is going on. More often than we probably like to admit, we don’t. There are a lot of reasons for that. One of them is God. God is doing things all the time and all around us. And what is crucial for us to know, is we too often fail to see what God is doing until God has done it. Until the phone rings. Until the angel comes in a dream.
In this season of Advent, may we challenge ourselves to be less confident in what we “know” and look harder for the wonderfully unexpected (even impossible) things that God is doing all around us.
- Sue Trollinger