Advent Calendar – 24 December
Nativity Stories: Joseph
It takes you over when you have a child. Protection. Nothing much else matters except making sure they’re safe. I see dangers everywhere now – food on the turn, a chesty cough, a bump on his head, jackals prowling. What if disease comes through and he’s taken off like that. It happens all the time, one minute they’re goo-gooing and the next their eyes glass over.
So when I had another dream in Bethlehem, the Magi just away, I didn’t hang around. It was the voice I’d heard back in Nazareth, it seems years but not even twelve months before, convincing me to stick with Mary. It was the best thing I’ve ever done; she’s brought something out of me I didn’t know I had. But now the voice was warning, “Herod fears the child, and will stop at nothing to destroy him. Get away right now, and cross the border to Egypt, you and Mary and the baby, where Herod cannot reach you.”
“How long will we be there?” my dream-self asked.
“Until I come again, and tell you it is safe.”
Before the boy was born, I’d have turned over and waited till the morning, but all that mattered now was getting him to safety. I woke up Mary and loaded up the donkey as best we could in the dark. The beast was far from happy, and nearly got me with a vicious kick. But off we went, Jesus strapped to his mother’s chest, sleeping with the motion of the donkey walking, bleary-eyed, heading south-west over the hills, the wild herbs releasing their aroma before the sun got up.
We made a life in Egypt; I scraped enough working for another joiner. I couldn’t understand his words but there’s not so much you need to say when sawing, drilling, planing. They need their doors and tables down in Egypt just like anywhere.
We sometimes caught a word from traders passing through. Herod had killed as many boys as he could find in Bethlehem, two years old or under. We held our Jesus close at the news, never letting on that he had been the target. What could a merchant make with such a gem of news to sell? Herod died anyway, soon after, and never knew if he’d caught his enemy by chance in that awful sweep.
The voice again, my angel in my sleeping head. “It’s time to go home. It’s safe, for now.” And so we packed up once more, saying farewell to those kindly folk who’d taken us in and given us work, while we toiled to learn enough of the language to get by. I didn’t care to stay too long near Bethlehem where Herod’s son now reigned, but one more dream convinced me that Nazareth to the north was safe for our precious boy, now speaking, now walking.
I made him his own tools: the sooner he learned how to saw a piece of wood without shedding his own blood the better. The dreams dried up, but Jesus grew, his mind alive, his body strong. I’d protected him thus far, and God had blessed him. I sometimes forgot there was nothing of my blood in him. Yet there was plenty of me in him in other ways, the way he raised his eyes, his choice of words, how he cast his eye on the grain in a piece of cedar. I could see Mary looking at him sometimes with a look of fear in her eyes, when he was squatting with a toy, or mopping his bowl with a piece of bread. What could she see that I could not?
Kreg Yingst, Dios con Nosotros (God with Us): 1. Los Refugiados (The Refugees)