From last night to this morning I’ve been worried.  If a certain life event happens, I do not know how it I can handle it all–practically, personally and financially.  It’s not an unfounded worry it’s actually very rooted in possible reality.  But it’s worry nontheless and worry is sin.  It’s the practice of unbelief.

I opened my people and began to read about Mary.  I wondered what it was like for her.   We know of her extraordinary “yes” to the Lord when she said she was going to become pregnant.  But she had to know that Joseph was indeed going to divorce her.  And that her mother and father and village would probably kick her out of the house.  And surely opportunities to raise a child as a single parent were not the same as they are today.

Worry, I’m sure, extended it’s invitation.

I believe it probably took more faith to say yes to her future than it did to say yes to becoming pregnant.  She had to trust God for what seemed like impossibly dire circumstances. It took courage to believe that God would care for her when the future looked so bleak.

But who could have known that God would miraculously appear to Joseph as well?  After he planned to divorce her.  Only God could have invited that man to follow Himself, and her, into a situation of utter shame.  And that Joseph obeyed the Lord sets him apart as a hero to me.

There are situations in life that are inevitable and they are dark and awful.  Sometimes they are even far worse and more awful than we ever feared.  But the life of faith is believing that God is there even in the black.  And who knows but that God can, even in this, do a miracle.

The easy faith is the simple platitude that we give one another that God is there.

The real faith is being the one to actually believe it.