Author's Note: I've always loved Joseph. I think what he did—thrice obeying angels that appeared to him in dreams, raising Jesus as his own son even knowing that he was not—is the mark of a good man, and I think he was a great good man and have always wanted to know more about him. It therefore has always disappointed me just how little he is mentioned in the Bible; after their return from Egypt—and one passing mention when Jesus is 12—Joseph disappears from the story all together, and that has always frustrated me...and, where there is frustration, there is a fanfic waiting to be written!
Merry Christmas!
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Why me, I'm just a simple man of trade
Why Him, with all the rulers in the world
Why here, inside this stable filled with hay
Why her, she's just an ordinary girl
Now I'm not one to second guess
What angels have to say
But this is such a strange way to save the world.
~4Him's "A Strange Way to Save the World"
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Joseph stared down at the baby boy now sleeping peacefully in his arms and couldn't quite believe that this was Him, the Christ—this red-faced, wrinkly little baby with a tuft of black hair standing straight up on the top of his head. He had been staring at the baby for nearly an hour and still couldn't make his idea of a Savior fit into those closed eyes and tiny fists.
Mary sat up, propping her back against the door to the donkey's stall, and held her arms out for her new baby. Joseph knelt beside her and placed him in her arms. "He fell asleep, finally," he whispered.
Mary bent her head over the baby; her uncovered dark hair, still damp from labor, hid their faces as she touched her lips to his forehead. "Jesus," she sighed. "Jesus-bar-Joseph." Then she looked up, her eyes worried. "You wouldn't mind giving him your name?"
"Of course not," Joseph said, unsure if there was any other answer to the question. Little Jesus yawned, exposing his wide, toothless mouth, then shifted a little inside the pile of rags that made up his swaddling and fell back to sleep—and something happened in that moment that Joseph did not expect.
He fell in love with the baby boy.
Joseph had never imagined himself being able to really love the boy the way a father should love his son—he had thought that the memory of how he had learned of Mary's pregnancy, that horrible sting of shock and betrayal, would always be sitting in the back of his mind whenever he looked at him, never mind the fact that Mary's story of an angel telling her that she would be pregnant while still a virgin turned out to be true. Even after the dream, even after hearing her story corroborated by the same angel who brought her the message, Joseph had not been sure he was the right man for the job, and he had spent the past six months wondering about the baby that was about to enter his life—the Son of God himself. How could he love and raise such a child? He wasn't a priest or teacher of the law. He had no particular knowledge of God that he could pass on, no particular spiritual guidance to offer anyone, least of all the Savior of the world. He was no one, a poor Nazarene carpenter who made tables and chairs for a living. He could teach a son how to join chair legs so well that they would never come loose, but what use would that skill be to the Son of God?
"Of course," Joseph said again, still answering Mary's question. "He's…my son." He wasn't sure if those words were blasphemous—the part of him that flinched as he said them made him think that they might be—but they brought tears to Mary's eyes, and he was struck by the enormity of the situation once again.
Mary hadn't asked for this, this responsibility, this privilege, this burden, either, but she had never tried to run from it. She was so much stronger than he was. Joseph remembered the day she had told him about the angel, about her pregnancy. She had been frightened, worried because she knew he had no reason to believe her, but she had held his eyes and told her story without flinching. And she had been telling the truth. She had endured the condemnation of all of Nazareth with the same patience and gentleness that had made him love her to begin with; half the city wanted her stoned for adultery from the moment she returned from her cousin Elizabeth's, but she never lost her temper with anyone.
Still, Joseph had seen fear in her eyes for the last six months and now again as she looked up at him from the stable floor. "I'm scared, Joseph," she admitted in a whisper, glancing back down at baby Jesus. "I can't do this alone."
"Mary." Joseph put his arms around her, taking care not to jostle their sleeping child now that he was finally asleep. "You're not alone. The Lord is with you, and so am I."
If Joseph had been told that he would witness the arrival of the Christ, this wasn't the way he would have imagined it happening. But, looking into his baby's face, he suddenly felt sure that God had known what He was doing. He wasn't convinced that it was exactly proper—who ever imagined that the Christ would be born the same way that other children are, or that he would be wrapped in rags and spend his first hours in the middle of a Bethlehem stable?—but he understood that this was the way God meant it to be, and that would have to be enough.