Trusting God Is With Us

“His will belongs entirely to Christ. He lives according to Christ's desires and not his own.”

“There are people in our lives who have hurt us...Joseph stands before us and reminds us that we do not have the whole truth about any person or situation. It is therefore wise to lean toward grace and mercy, to bend rather than attack, to listen rather than reject, and to forgive rather than retaliate.”

“In essence, Joseph teaches us how to live in loving fidelity to all that we cling to humanly and religiously, even as we are open to a mystery of God that takes us beyond all the categories of our religious practice and imagination. And isn’t that one of the real challenges of Christmas?”

“we need to acknowledge the imperfection in ourselves and in others and come to see that God can do truly marvellous things, even with our highly imperfect responses”

“And so let Joseph teach us how to welcome God’s son into our lives this Christmas, caring for everyone’s reputation, and yet, if necessary, being unafraid to lose our own”

“The Word made flesh caught us by surprise — it even caught Mary and Joseph unawares. But it was always in God’s mind to do this — to become part of His creation, to become one of us.”

“One of Joseph's great virtues is that...he is willing to listen to this voice that comes from a deeper part of his soul. He's willing to be a person of faith in that sense to think and to feel out of the box.”

“And let us recognize the quiet courage of many “little” people who are finding that they can be brave like Mary and Joseph, who took great risks to ensure that Christ was and is with us”

“our Gospel is about the fact that God loves us even when we live bad lives, and enables us to find forgiveness and happiness. At Christmas, we particularly focus on the way in which God went so far in bringing us that forgiveness that he chose to share our human life.”

“Are we ready for that? Are we ready to let our lives go off course, off into a new direction, perhaps even an uncomfortable direction, because God is now living in us?”

“Whether it was the uncertainty of the times of Isaiah or the uncertainty of the Roman empire in the 1st century, troubles loomed on the horizon. Within the backstories of darkness, God came as Light.”

“The will of God is a difficult path to walk on; but for those who have chosen to persevere, it always ends in glory”

“As we meditate on the manger scene with Joseph, Mary, and the child Jesus, surrounded by the Shepherds, we recognize the presence of our Savior in the presence of so many homeless people, refugees and people in the hospitals and prisons”

“So the question is this: Do we want to be stuck in our small private dreams, or do we dare get caught up the adventure of God’s holy dream, of a love beyond all imagining. We may be blocked by simply not desiring enough.”

“God saw his love for Mary, the sacrifice he was willing to make, and he let Joseph get to that point where the only thing he could do was trust in God. Joseph did not know yet that his beloved Mary carried God within her. In his darkest night, God was right there, unbeknownst to him.”

“the promise is this: God with us. Emmanuel. Not God-who-will-fix-every-difficulty-and-prevent-all-suffering-right-now. God who will be with us, who will live with us, who will rejoice with us, who will suffer and die with us. This is God’s solidarity with God’s people.”

“do we listen for God’s voice and respond, as Joseph did, even when it seems extraordinarily challenging, even foolish; or do we cling to our own stratagems, our cunning plans, which will likely bring us, eventually, to disaster?”

“The Incarnation reminds us we are interconnected to one another...When you sit down face to face with another person and you start talking about the things that really matter, you are going to find more things in common than things that divide. When you find that bridge of commonality, there is Christ.”

“Those of us who know the story of Joseph know how radically things can change as time passes and God’s plan becomes clear...When the present situation is a total loss, it is still somehow a part of our salvation.”

“The surrender to God is what makes me fully alive. And the Bible is trying to get us, look, out of this little puny space of the self-centered self.”

“our histories stand in continuity to this great biblical history. David to Ahaz to Joseph to Jesus to Paul and that trajectory continues now to us.”

“The problem, and here we come to the heart of the matter, it's not that God is reluctant to give but that we are reluctant to ask. Not that God hesitates to give us grace but that we hesitate to receive it.”

“The point is we might give up on God but God never gives up on us. We might think there's no meaning, no purpose during this but God keeps telling us 'yes, there is.'”

“In Isaiah's mind, undoubtedly, it is the child of Ahaz, the line will go on. But now we see in light of the angel's remark that that was in fact a prediction of something even more wonderful.”

“all the signs that we ask for, all the dreams that we dream, they're all finally related to Christ.”

“Never underestimate the power of God. Stop overestimating your own power.”