Dec. 10th. Righteous People

I have decided to change the focus of my BLOG's over the next week until Christmas. What I hope to accomplish is insight into the Birth narratives in the Gospels and the truths held for us in this season. Join with me each weekday to walk the Jesus walk.

Righteous people.

I think it is amazing how much we read into the story of Christmas and therefore lose the central message. I must admit that there is not much about Christmas that I don't like, but one thing is perhaps the crowds of people. However, that is not just a Christmas thing. I am just not that much into crowds. I love, however, the pageantry, the Nativity settings, the stories of Christmas, and yes even the movies both secular and sacred. They have become for me a part of the celebration and mystery of the season.

However, when you consider the Biblical text in Matthew, we find something completely different. What we have here is the story of family and struggle and even death. Yes, there are some amazing external events with the Maji, but beyond that we have a family in crisis. The beauty of this passage for me is how and why they survived. What made the difference? I know families that break up over less and so do you. In the midst of this beautiful story lies some deep truth for us as well.

The first truth is righteousness. Joseph had this. His struggle was about doing the "right" thing. Legally, he could just say the marriage to Mary was off, and he would have been justified to do so. But righteousness most often does not work that way. Righteousness makes decisions not based upon just the law, but upon what is the right thing to do—the compassionate thing to meet another’s need.

I like the fact that Joseph was already considered a righteous man. I can imagine that the pressure Joseph felt at this point was huge. Public opinion is hard to live down. Family expectations and long-range goals needed to be considered. His head told him to divorce Mary, but his heart was another matter. Righteousness is also about relationship. Broken trust and promise are not the marks of a righteous person. Belief, in times like these, is hard to come by. Who can I trust? Who can I turn too?

Joseph did the right thing because he was righteous. Righteous people have God experiences. They have ears that can hear what God is saying, and God speaks to them in astonishing ways. In a dream, Joseph came to a point in his life where he could trust that what was happening was from God. That was the difference maker. Sometimes the answers to our most difficult struggles come to us in the most unusual ways. I think righteous people are the ones who can discern the difference and make decisions that make a difference.