Hello,
My friends.
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in docks,
Welcoming you to day four of our Advent 2025 series,
Waiting in Matthew.
As always,
I invite you to still yourself,
To find a comfortable place,
To close your eyes if you like,
To breathe deeply in and out,
To let yourself be centred in this moment.
As we take some time to reflect today on Matthew chapter one,
Verse 20,
Where Matthew writes,
But just when he had resolved to do this,
An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.
So again,
We spend some time today focusing on Joseph,
The quiet man of Advent.
No words of his are ever recorded in the Gospels.
He's not known for what he says,
But he is known for how he listens.
When Matthew introduces him,
It's a time and a moment of deep inner turmoil.
Joseph has just discovered that Mary,
His betrothed,
Is with child.
He knows the child is not his and everything in him must have ached with confusion,
Grief,
And perhaps even a quiet kind of shame.
He was,
Matthew tells us,
A righteous man,
Meaning not rigid or proud,
But someone whose life was ordered around God's justice and mercy.
And it's because of that that he resolves to dismiss Mary quietly,
Not to expose her to scandal or to punishment.
It is an act of painful compassion to release her,
To protect her,
And to walk away.
And it's right here in that moment of decision that the text says,
But just when he had resolved to do this,
An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.
Did you get that?
Just when he had decided,
Just when he thought the matter was settled,
Just when he'd reasoned his way to a merciful conclusion,
At that moment,
God speaks.
And this should give us some pause to ponder and think about the timing of God.
Because Matthew's phrasing is pretty deliberate just when he had resolved.
God doesn't speak before Joseph's decision,
Not while he's weighing his options,
But after.
In the silence that follows human certainty,
Divine revelation arrives.
And let's be honest,
Isn't that how God so often works?
When our reasoning has run its course,
When we've done all we can with our limited understanding,
When we finally stopped trying to control the story,
It's then that the Spirit moves quietly into the room of our hearts.
Waiting for God to speak is rarely passive.
It often means standing at the crossroads of confusion and obedience.
It means being faithful enough to stay in the tension,
To resist the temptation,
To rush toward resolution.
Joseph's waiting teaches us that God's voice doesn't compete with the noise of our decisions.
It waits for the stillness that follows them.
Sometimes it's only when we have resolved,
When we have come to the end of what we can manage,
That God's whisper can finally be heard.
And as we said yesterday as well,
You'll notice the angel doesn't come in the daylight,
But in a dream.
That mysterious landscape between control and surrender,
Between the known and the unknown.
In the Hebrew imagination,
Dreams were often the place where God's Spirit could reach a person most deeply because the mind was quiet and the defences were down.
It was the place where the rational gave way to the relational.
God's word to Joseph comes through a dream because divine communication often meets us in the part of ourselves that's most open.
Not our logic,
But our listening.
In dreams,
God doesn't lecture.
God reveals,
Not information,
But intimacy.
The angel speaks Joseph's name and when he does,
He doesn't say,
O man of Nazareth or descendant of David,
He says,
Joseph,
Son of David.
He addresses Joseph personally and roots him in the story of God's promise.
The voice of God always personalises the promise.
It doesn't speak in abstractions.
It reminds us who we are.
It places us and tells us our place in the story.
And it gives us courage to act on something that human reasoning cannot explain.
And notice too,
When Joseph wakes,
He doesn't argue,
He doesn't debate,
He doesn't ask for proof.
He simply does what the angel commanded him.
He takes Mary as his wife.
He literally enters the mystery.
And that act of obedience changes everything.
In his silence,
Joseph becomes the human doorway through which God's plan takes form in the world.
His willingness to listen gives shape to the incarnation.
So much of waiting for God to speak is about trust.
Trust that God's word,
When it comes,
Will be enough.
Not complete,
Not exhaustive,
Not all the answers that we want or even wish or hope for.
But enough light for the next faithful step.
Advent invites us into that same trust to quiet the noise of our resolutions.
To hold space in our uncertainty for the voice that might come when we least expect it.
Maybe God's voice isn't absent.
Maybe it's just waiting for us to stop feeling the silence.
And notice too the phrase,
But just when he'd resolved to do this,
That phrase,
That divine interruption,
That might be the very essence of grace.
Think about it.
How many times in our lives has God interrupted what we'd planned?
A conversation we didn't want to have,
A detour we didn't anticipate,
A relationship or a calling that disrupted our sense of order.
The voice of God often enters,
Not as confirmation,
But as interruption.
It doesn't always soothe.
Sometimes it unsettles.
But in that unsettling is the moment of divine love,
Pulling us into a story larger than the one we thought we were living.
Joseph's waiting then becomes a model for all of us who long for clarity.
It's not about demanding that God speak sooner,
But it's about staying open long enough for God to speak differently.
Advent is a school of silence.
And Joseph is its quietest and most faithful student.
His silence isn't emptiness.
It's receptivity.
His wait isn't passivity.
It's readiness.
He holds his questions gently,
Knowing that sometimes the holiest answer comes not in explanation,
But in presence.
In our own lives,
Waiting for God to speak may not come through angels or dreams,
But through a word of scripture that stirs unexpectedly,
A moment of stillness that feels charged with peace,
A person who shows up and carries God's tenderness in their voice,
An audio for Advent that you're listening to along the way.
God is still speaking.
Not always in thunder,
Not always in clarity,
But friend,
It's always in love.
And if we can learn,
Like Joseph,
To wait and to listen,
To keep the night open for the whisper,
Then even our confusion can become a place of revelation.
And so as we sit with that from today's reflection that has,
I guess,
Touched us most deeply or hit us most hard,
I invite you to pray with me.
God of silence and surprise,
You speak not to overwhelm,
But to awaken.
You come not in noise,
But in nearness.
Teach us to wait as Joseph waited.
Faithful,
Uncertain,
Open to your interruption.
In the confusion of our own decisions,
Help us to leave space for your spirit to breathe.
When your voice seems distant,
Give us the courage to rest in trust rather than reach for control.
And when you speak,
Whether in dream,
A scripture,
Or the quiet movement of our hearts,
May we listen with the same obedient love that Joseph showed.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
So my friend,
As you rise to go into your day from our time of contemplation,
May you find stillness enough to hear God's whisper in your own night.
May you learn to trust that divine silence isn't absence,
But preparation.
May you wake like Joseph,
Ready to act on the quiet word that changes everything.
And may grace,
Peace,
And love go with you into this day and every day as we walk closer to Christmas through Advent.
Amen.
Grace and peace be with you.
