My Devotionals

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord….So [the shepherds] hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child (Luke 2:8-11,16-17)

You just discovered a piece of earth-shattering news. You pull open Twitter or Instagram to share it, but you know you’re going to need some help to spread the message. Who will you tag in your post? @CNN? @POTUS? @TaylorSwift13? If the news is religious in nature, maybe you’ll tag @Pontifex or @YouVersion? 

Those would all be logical...

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” (Luke 1:26-28)

It’s likely that Mary worked exclusively inside the home as a wife and mother. What can her vocation tell us about our own? At least three things. 

First, God sees you and your work, even when the world doesn’t. Mary was a peasant teenage girl living in a backwater town. We don’t know what work she was doing before Gabriel showed up, but we can be certain it was obscure. Mary was the anti-influencer. Nobody knew her name. Nobody, that is, except God.

God saw Mary’s faithfulness when nobody else did, and for that, she was “highly favored” in his eyes. This reminds us that even when we work in...

…an angel of the Lord appeared to [Zechariah], standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John….he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Zechariah asked the angel, “How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” The angel said to him, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to tell you this good news. And now you will be silent and not able to speak until the day this happens, because you did not believe my words, which will come true at their appointed...

But after [Joseph] had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20-21)

As we embark on our study of the vocations of some of the principal players in the Christmas narrative, we stop first at Jesus’s earthly father, Joseph.

In Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55, we learn that Joseph worked as a “carpenter.” My concordance says the Greek word tektōn that we translate to “carpenter” can also be understood to mean “a craftsman” or “an artisan.” In other words, Joseph worked to create new things for others. And of course, per the custom of the time, Joseph’s children (including Jesus) would have worked alongside him.

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