Thought for the Month December 2025

Happy New Church Year! Yes, it’s that time again as we leave one church worship year for another, and as always, that must mean we have entered the season of Advent, which just like its Lenten cousin, demands of us that most precious of personal possessions, our time! The giving up of our time to simply stop, reflect and spiritually prepare, is not always as simple as it may sound.

The difficulty that the Advent observance has, much like the Lenten one, is that it’s competing with so many other seasonal secular preparations, which are of course time-consuming distractions and can mean that sometimes we really do struggle to fulfil our religious commitments. So, therein lies your first Advent thought, which is to ask yourself, as truthfully as you can, when and how will you make time for God in the days ahead?

If you’re struggling with how to begin your Advent observance, then Scripture, as always, is a good place to find some much-needed divine inspiration. The narrative of the nativity is one that we have seen, heard or read many times over the years, but it would be a hasty thing to believe that there is nothing new to be found in experiencing it once again. It is a story that contains courage, duty, endurance and trepidation, before eventually transforming into overwhelming joy, hope and love for the world, found in the birth of the Christ child.  There is always much focus on the part of Mary the mother of Jesus, and rightly so. Her courage shown during her heavenly visitation, her endurance of the arduous journey to Bethlehem and then her resilience to give birth in an unsanitary animal shelter, more than entitles her to the reverence and praise she receives.

This year though, I would like to shift the spotlight from the central tableau of mother and child and instead focus it on the part played by Joseph, who I feel is sometimes cast as a peripheral contributor to the story.

Imagine that you are Joseph, you are betrothed to a virtuous young woman who comes to you one day and tells you that she is now with child, and not only that, but it was the Spirit of God that had placed it there. First of all, would you honestly believe her, and secondly, what sort of emotions would rise up within?

We of course don’t know what Joseph felt, all the Bible tells us is that he is ‘faithful to the law but did not want to expose her to public disgrace and had in mind to divorce her quietly’.  The law of that time would have required Joseph to expose Mary to the public disgrace of being with child outside of wedlock. This was a very serious breach of the moral and religious code of the time, one that would have resulted in Mary being shamed to the point of being banished from the community, ousted with no means of support for her or the child to be, or even worse, if public anger was so enraged, she could have been stoned. But Joseph does not do this, conflicted as he is between his righteous compliance of the law and his feelings towards Mary, he chooses to be compassionate and protect her as much as he can with a quiet divorce in mind.

Imagine the emotions he may have been battling with when making that decision, the anger, betrayal and wounded male pride, a personal insult that may have thrown a lesser man into a rage of retribution. Remember also that Joseph had not yet had a divine visitation explaining the truth of Mary’s mission for God, and so what we have in those few lines of the story, begins to paint a picture of a man, who although set in his ways of the time, is also a very kind, considerate and compassionate human being, who appears to have genuine feelings for Mary or at least towards her for the situation she finds herself in.

An angel did eventually come to Joseph to endorse Mary’s version of events and from that moment on the divorce is put aside and he commits himself entirely to protecting both her and the child, committed to serving God’s cause. He is there on the road to Bethlehem, the flight to Egypt, the return to Nazareth and during the early life of Jesus. Always there to protect and nurture his family, present but never heard in voice and for which the Church now calls him ‘the silent saint’. Joseph, it seems is a man to be measured by his actions and not his words, perhaps we can think of someone in our lives today who might fit this description?

Not much is written of Joseph after the nativity, he appears again briefly when Jesus is 12yrs old during a visit to The Temple, but never again, and it is believed he died between this point and the start of Jesus’s ministry. Perhaps this is why Joseph is not a more central character in Christian orthodoxy, as what has been written of him and the manner in which he is portrayed, can cause him to simply blend into the background noise.

I personally think Joseph is more worthy of that and maybe when we teach young ones the story of the nativity, we might in our own way, tell them of Joseph and emphasise what he really did for Mary and Jesus, whilst placing his figurine a little closer to the crib to signify his importance.

We live in a time when misogyny within society is on the increase, with reports of violence and demeaning attitudes towards women being reported daily in the media. There are high profile social media influencers, who are just bitter men trying to poison the thoughts of young men by using their misogynistic agendas. We need more positive male role models in the world to counter this; we need more Josephs’ to be prominent in daily life, whose actions can speak louder than any word. We need those actions to show that being a good man is measured in our respect, kindness and compassion for the world and especially for the women within it, we must all love each other as commanded.

To all whom these words reach, I truly wish you a peaceful Christmas and a very hopeful 2026. Whatever your circumstances may be, know that the love of God is always with you, even if sometimes it’s hard to see.  Amen. 

Danny