Holidays - Seasons Greetings!

There he sat in the dark in his shop, which was a shed that leaned against his house. There, with his hands touching the wood and the rough tools of his daily toil, he was at home to face this thing out with himself.

For some reason Mary feared him. That much was plain. Evidently she had gone away to the hill country of Judea to avoid him. And now, even though she had voluntarily returned, she could not at all bear the sight of him or endure his company. Something had happened which had made him suddenly distasteful to her, or there was some hidden, terrible reason why she feared him.

He cast about futilely in his mind for any word or action of his which might have frightened the maiden, for she was not as other young women of her age. But, somehow, he seemed to know that this thought was idle.

The trouble, whatever it was, was a thing that went deeper than any chance or ill-considered word of his could have gone.

Suddenly, a mist swam before his eyes, and his hands gripped desperately at the friendly familiar things about him to keep his hold upon himself. The world stopped in its course and staggered, while his senses reeled from the searing pain that shot through his heart.

Mary was lost to him!

It smote him with a shock of agony that seemed to wrench his very soul from its moorings. It shot through his mind like a shaft of burning light, leaving him dazed and numb with a paralysis of all thought.

Mary was not for him!

He did not argue, he did not struggle with the thought.

It leaped upon him and bore him to the earth.

He had no complaint, no blame. It was all a part of the futility, the failure, the emptiness of his whole life. He, the son of kings, the son of David, had ever stood by and seen the prize of life snatched from him, even as he would have put out his hand to it. Failure, humiliation, bread turned to stone; these had been the law of his life and the wages of his toil all the days from his youth up. Was it indeed his punishment, for that he had let the royal blood of David lie stagnant in his veins, for that he had not risen up, as that David would have done, to strike a blow for his right, for the people, for God?

Then his heart went back on the way of self torture to the pictures it had made of Mary. He saw the sainted girl standing in his doorway, a blessing before all men. He saw a thrice-blessed woman guiding his household in gravity and love and the grace of godliness.

And his soul cried out in unvoiced agony. And his heart, in its torture, wrung itself dry of blood, so that he swooned and fell upon the ground, a broken thing.

The light which awoke him was not the dawn. It was the radiance which the Angel brought from the Throne.

“Joseph, son of David,” he heard a voice, as he lifted his arm to his eyes to shield them from the light,” fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.

“And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.”

Then the light was gone from the shed. And Joseph reached out his hand to the teeth of the saw, and they were sharp and tore his fingers. And he put his hand upon his hewing axe, and it was heavy to lift. These things were real. He had not dreamt a dream. And the light stayed in his heart.

So, early in the morning, he sought the rabbi Amon and brought him with him to the house where Mary dwelt.

Mary, seeing them approach, was frightened with a terrible fear; for Joseph must surely be coming, thus with witnesses, to put her from him with the dread “bill of divorcement.” But as they came nearer her eyes were quick to see the light in the face of Joseph. And she knew that God had listened to the cry of her heart as she had prayed in the night, and had revealed His truth to him.

So she came forward and stood before him. While he, looking upon her in great and tender reverence, said:

“Mary, God hath had pity on my blindness.”

And, blessing God in the wonder and adoration of their hearts, they went to their home.