Shattered dreams!

Matthew 1:18-24

These are the facts concerning the birth of Jesus Christ: His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But while she was still a virgin she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her fiancé, being a man of stern principle,* decided to break the engagement but to do it quietly, as he didn’t want to publicly disgrace her. As he lay awake considering this, he fell into a dream, and saw an angel standing beside him. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “don’t hesitate to take Mary as your wife! For the child within her has been conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a Son, and you shall name him Jesus (meaning ‘Savior’), for he will save his people from their sins. This will fulfill God’s message through his prophets — ‘Listen! The virgin shall conceive a child! She shall give birth to a Son, and he shall be called “Emmanuel” (meaning “God is with us”).’” When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel commanded and brought Mary home to be his wife.

Food for thought!

Joseph. The man of dreams. (If you love football, you can compare Joseph to Mourinho, today dismissed from managing Chelsea). Sometimes, our dreams fall into a million pieces at our feet. What happened in his life is worthy of note this morning. It may help you and me when our dreams are shattered.

Mary and Joseph were betrothed to one another. This was the ancient Hebrew engagement period. It was as binding as a marriage. Surely they were excited about their future together as husband and wife. Surely they were both counting down the days until they could be together and live together as husband and wife.

During this betrothal period both the bride and the groom were to keep themselves physically pure for the other spouse. Unlike our day, this was a time when both men and women were expected to go into the marriage as pure virgins. But, it was during this time that Joseph discovered that his bride was pregnant. This would have been a source of great embarrassment both to Mary and Joseph, as well as to their respective families. It seemed that all the dreams Joseph had for the future had been shattered by this devastating discovery.

Isn't this just how life is at times? We make all our plans for the future and set things up just the way we want they to be, then some event or the other takes place and we see our hopes, our plans and our dreams fall down all around us! When these things happen, it breaks our hearts because it is unexpected and even unwanted. However, like Joseph, we are often blind to the fact that God is at work behind the scenes. It fact, it was God who shattered our dreams! That may be hard to understand, but it is still how things work.

We may not like it when the Lord shatters our dreams and our hopes, but when everything has been said and done, we will see that God's plan was the perfect plan all along! Do you remember Joseph in the Old Testament? His path lead him from the place of prominence in his father's house, through a pit, into Potipher's house and though a prison. In the end, he would end up in the place of power and honour. It would never have happened had God not first shattered his dreams!