Joseph: Peace

What if what they said was true? The angel who told Joseph that he, a carpenter, was being called to raise a savior? The wise men who said they’d followed a star and who brought gifts fit for a king?

Did Joseph look at his calloused carpenter’s hands and wonder how he could ever raise a king when all the kings anyone knew of had soft, clean hands? Hands that only ever beckoned others to do the hard work? The dusty and the messy and the humble work?

Any son of Joseph’s would grow up learning to be a carpenter beside his father. This some-day king would have calloused, work-scarred hands. Hands used to getting dirty and doing what needed to be done.

Did Joseph ever imagine that those were the kind of hands God had in mind to reach out and offer peace to the world? Wholeness and healing? Reconciliation and shalom? That when his son would reach out his hands to touch the sick and rejected and broken, those carpenter hands wouldn’t shy away from the heat of their fevers or from the feel of their slippery tears, of their scarred and scabby skin? And that, in those hands, the people who came to him would feel the callouses of hard work like theirs, would feel the warmth and love in his touch, the tender strength of his embrace?

Maybe Joseph wondered why on earth God would ever have chosen him. Yet, the angel who appeared to him had said, “Do not be afraid.” Not a command, but an assurance that brought Joseph peace. What did Joseph have to offer a king? Only willing obedience offered through a carpenter’s hands. And that was enough, because God planned that, one day, his son’s outstretched carpenter’s hands would reach out to the whole world and offer us greatest peace of all.