We wouldn't blame Joseph if he'd decided to move to Australia and get away from the scandal. Or he could have thrown the whole thing on Mary, placing shame on Mary, whom he hardly knew since this was most likely an arranged marriage, was expecting a child that Joseph know he had nothing to do with. Then Mary must have been telling tall tales about an angel and about the Holy Spirit conceiving the child. But Joseph didn't do anything extreme. Instead he made plans to hush the whole thing and separate himself from he quietly - he was a righteous man and didn't want her to be disgraced.

Then came the dream that changed everything. Imagine an angel, appearing in a dream, validating Mary's story, predicting the birth of a savior.

Again, we wouldn't blame Joseph for rationalizing; for refusing to believe that the dream was anything more than; as Scrooge tried to tell Marley's ghost, "an indigested piece of potato." It would have been so easy to say balderdash and let Mary live in her own bad dream.

Instead, Joseph stepped up and married the woman, shouldered the burdens, and chose to play the part that God scripted for him in the greatest drama in human history. Joseph, we're told, had no union with Mary until after she gave birth. And they named the baby Jesus, which means "God saves."

The thing we'll never know is how many times Joseph second-guessed, or was temped to fall back into an ordinary life with no extraordinary claims on him.

Consider the implications: Joseph's reputation must certainly have suffered in a culture that wasn't the least bit lenient toward pregnancy out of wedlock. Most people would have blamed Joseph for disgracing Mary and even his family name. His business probably suffered His faith in God and his trust in Mary must surely have wavered at time when the whole thing seemed far-fetched. Then look at how the child himself must have turned Joseph's life upside down. It's tough enough to be a parent, but how do you parent the Son of God? "Do I teach him how to make furniture and build things? Or do I send him to the best schools and seminaries? Do I pretend to teach him anything, or will he start teaching me from the time he can talk?" Imagine the sense of responsibility and guardianship. "Can I let the savior of the world play tackle football; do I assume that God is going to do the protecting, or do I coddle him? Now I need to play my part in getting the savior ready to save. My new wife might be doing the childbearing, but I'll certainly have to do a lot of rearing. This isn't what I had in mind at all."

But from the day of that strange intervention in Joseph's life, all we know about him is that he was obedient, he played his part, he raised some other sons also, he probably died young (by our standards) and found a simple, honorable place in human history. Joseph, the guy who did the hard thing. The guy who did the right thing. That's pretty much it; all we really know.

Allow me to draw some parallels to our lives. First, we're just cruising along with ordinary expectations. Some of us have been raised with religious upbringing and a more attuned sense for God's claim and influence on our lives. Others of us have been raised with less God-awareness. All of us started making plans, dreaming dreams and making our way in ordinary ways in a miraculous world that becomes ordinary with time and familiarity.

Then, wham! A strange intervention - a piqued awareness of God. For some of us, it grabbed us when we were young. For others of us, it grabbed us when we weren't so young. For some of us, God interrupted really good times and proved Himself to be the author of those good times, and that awareness of God's part landed hard. For others, God intervened in the midst of crisis. He showed up and proved Himself with some extraordinary miracle or an undeniably comforting companionship. For others of us, He came alive in the pages of scripture we were reading, words we'd read before when, bam, the meaning locked and loaded and blew us away with truth and relevance. Others of us had a person come along who embodied God's love so effectually that we couldn't deny the origins of such a love lived out so generously. However it happened, God intervened. Maybe it was even a dream. Or an angel. Or a sunset. God stepped in and you and I have never been the same since. For some of us, this encounter was huge, quick, liberating and emotional. For others of us, our God-awareness crept up on us slowly until we were overshadowed and under girded by faith.

What is our response?

Well, we basically try to do what we're told to do. We're told we need to learn, so we read our Bibles voraciously. So much is new and so much is confusing that we eat with both hands like hungry children. We're told we need fellowship, so we cozy up to the church and break through into some relationships that foster our growth. We make ourselves available to serve people and help people and give to people, trying to add some muscles to our spiritual physique. And we try desperately to develop prayer lives.

Then almost all of us hit a point of second-guessing. As I watch relatively new Christians, it happens like clockwork. We hit a point after months, or a year or two, when we wonder if the whole thing was strange dream. Sometimes the Bible perplexes us. We hit an impasse when there's something that seems to make no sense, or there's something that ask more of us than we're willing to give. Or else, growing closer to church people, we discover that the church is a flawed place with broken people and we wonder if the Christian system really works - if it actually changes live. Or else we offer to serve and no one makes room for us at the table. Or we burn ourselves out by going too hard and forgetting to do the self-care that preserves our usefulness for the long haul. Perhaps worst of all, we hit a point where it doesn't feel as if God is as close as He used to be. Our prayers seem to bounce off the ceiling. We wonder if our new found faith was just a craze or a fad or a feeling or a phase in our lives. Was it all just a dream?

This is where we lose people out the back door. In these moments of doubting and questioning, many young Christians slip away from God's extraordinary claims upon their lives and slide back into the ordinary world from which they came. It's almost as if we need to offer a class on surviving the second year blues.

And it all makes for a hard season. Old patterns and habits and friends and haunts hold a familiar mystique, calling us back. We start doing the math and wonder how many cruises (for that matter, how many boats) we could have bought with the money we put in the offering tray. And we've realized by now that the world has only a grudging respect for us as Christians - yes, says the world, he's a good guy, but weird and simple and not nearly as wild at parties as he used to be. Our very lives well-lived can accuse others in ways they find uncomfortable, so we often feel distanced from old friends, and even family. And the pressure builds and the doubts tease and coax. Maybe it was all a dream.

Then, if we stay in the game, something takes hold, in a heart-compartment deeper than mere feeling. Somewhere in or around the soul, a truer and more stubborn kind of faith takes hold. It isn't always as excitable but it's indefatigable. This new kind of faith might have more questions than answers, but they are legitimate questions that seem to be more honest and true and more gospel than our previous brazen sureness had been. All in all, grace has taken hold, and we see people in and out of the church with different eyes - fellow pilgrims, all of them trying, straining, resting, healing, and hoping. Not cynical, but newly informed, we fall in love with the church, a noble place where good and broken people help other broken people pick up the pieces and find purpose and a cause that suits their gifts and talents.

Even the sticks in mud (the ones who irritated us our early faith because they didn't seem to get it - they seemed to have a weak strain of the Christian virus) turn out to be people with amazing sticking power, with their own stories of victory or loss or survival or private heroism, until we realize that some of the least excitable Christians in the pew are actually those fervent. So we give them a break and leave the judging to God.

And we take our spots next to them in the pew or the small group or the feeding line or the youth group, and we go forward. In other words, we get through that hard season. It might not be the last; it is likely the most perplexing. And we go forward, listening, learning, praying, serving, giving, even when it's the hard thing. After all, it was no dream.