“Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Rise, take the Child and His mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the Child, to destroy Him.’ And he rose and took the Child and His mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called My Son.’” (Matthew 2:13-15 ESV)
Look at the trust Joseph shows here. There’s no “Are you sure?” or “Can we wait till the morning?” He just gets up, wakes Mary, and they get on the road. That’s what you want in the man in charge of Jesus’ safety. He gets his orders and he does it.
Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to overlook the number of miracles in which Joseph has a part. I count four prophetic dreams overall—and Jesus’ birth, of course. But Joseph does his part so faithfully that he makes it look ordinary. For him, it probably was ordinary. There would have been no way to survive Jesus’ infancy without a strong trust in God.
I’d like to trust God like Joseph did. And knowing Jesus, I can start learning. Because He has never let me down—and He never will. He saw all of us struggling in this broken world under the power of death and evil, and He had compassion on us. He came to us. He lay down His life for us. And He rose again so that we could live forever with Him, in trust and joy.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, help me to trust You. Amen.
Reflection Questions:
* How do you know when someone is trustworthy?
* Who do you know who sets a great example of trusting the Lord?
* Tell about a time when you really had to trust in God to make it through.
Advent Devotions were written by Dr. Kari Vo.
Originally published in The Lutheran Hour on January 3, 2023
Used by permission from International Lutheran Laymen’s League, all rights reserved
