Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
By outward appearances, he was just a regular guy, a carpenter by 
trade. He offered up two small birds for Jesus’s circumcision; if he’d been wealthy, the sacrifice would have been a lamb. His prestigious lineage—descended from King David—hadn’t seemed to have brought him much worldly gain.
In other words, he was the perfect person to serve as Jesus’s earthly father.
Joseph had to have been troubled by the strange requests and situations he faced—Mary’s unusual pregnancy, the urgent need to move to Egypt, the direction to move back to his homeland, the comments of Simeon and Anna at the presentation, the disappearance of his twelve-year-old son for three days. Why was all this happening to a simple, devout carpenter in middle age or older? And yet, whether through the reassurance of angels that appeared to him in dreams or through prayer, in each instance, Joseph obeyed, and moved forward.
I’m thinking that while Mary pondered a great many things in her heart, Joseph probably didn’t. Perhaps that’s why we don’t see his reaction to the Presentation or the finding at the temple. Perhaps by then, he had learned to take God’s plans as they came, without needing that angelic reassurance.
By outward appearances, most of us are just regular people—not famous, not fabulously wealthy.
In other words, we are the perfect people to serve as the Lord’s messengers.
