Brave

I have been brave. I'm brave all the time. For example, I interview musicians for ONCOURSE Magazine. I have been doing this for two years now, and I am terrified every time. I can't sleep the night before I do an interview. I can't eat the day I do the interview. All I can manage to do within two hours of an interview is pace like a caged animal. But I always do the interview.

Doing an interview over the phone is a pretty low-risk scenario. I'm sure there are those of you who cannot believe that anyone could be afraid of talking to a stranger on the telephone. I was thinking today about something that a couple of kids in the Bible did that would have terrified even the boldest of us.

The virgin Mary had a baby boy, and she and Joseph named him Jesus.

We tend to think of Mary in supernatural terms, but she wasn't supernatural. She wasn't an angel, and she wasn't perfect. She was probably 14, and she probably prayed a lot, but otherwise she was just a plain old kid. Think of the terrible things girls in your high school go through when one of them gets pregnant. Mary potentially had it even worse. She could have been stoned to death.

Joseph was still a teenager himself, and when he found out Mary was pregnant, he decided to dump her. He knew it wasn't his kid. He hadn't touched her, and he didn't want anybody thinking he had. But the angel came and told him to marry her. So, Joseph obeyed. What did people--Mary and Joseph's parents and friends and neighbors--think? That Mary was still a virgin and had become pregnant with God's child through a miracle? That Joseph was not the father? Not likely. No matter what they told no matter how many people, everyone was going to believe that Joseph got a little too close to Mary a little too soon. Now they could both be stoned to death.

The trip to Bethlehem on a donkey doesn't sound too bad. But remember how old these young adults are? If they were to make the pilgrimage to Bethlehem today, they still would be riding on donkeys; they would've been too young to get driver's licenses. And they would be more likely to meet a highway robber on the road than a highway patrolman. 

They got to Bethlehem and had to deliver the child in a manger. The Bible doesn't mention any doctors or midwives. Joseph was the one telling Mary to push. A teenage boy delivering a baby in a cave is the kind of heroic news on "Good Morning America" these days.

And then, after a couple of years in Bethlehem, the wise men came. That night, Joseph, still a teenager, was told by an angel to flee from Bethlehem to Egypt. Now the teens were immigrants. It's starting to sound like a show on the WB. 

Mary and Joseph were brave. They were teenagers being used by God to change the whole world. Even the history of the whole world. They were changing not only the future, but the past. Everything the Old Testament said about the Passover lamb or the son of David was going to be understood in a whole new way. They didn't exactly understand the rewards, and they knew they were risking death, but they continued to trust God every step of the way. They were brave, godly teenagers. And they raised God's son.