Be Still And Know

Matthew 1.19 NLT "Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly." At the centre of the account of Jesus’ birth is a man about whom we know very little. Joseph was the legal father of Jesus and Matthew’s gospel begins with Jesus’ family line through Joseph. But after the birth of Jesus we meet Joseph on only one occasion. That was when the family went for a Passover visit to Jerusalem when Jesus was 12 years old. We get the distinct impression that Mary was a widow by the time Jesus’ public ministry began. One verse in the New Testament tells us that Joseph was an artisan (Matthew 13.55) and it has been generally assumed that he was a carpenter but we can’t even be sure of that. He could have been a worker with iron or stone. Although we know so very little about this extremely important man, we know about his character. He was described as a “righteous man”, which means that he was concerned to be obedient to t