Do you trust God? Do you strive to understand Him and His ways in every situation of life? Do you make your major life decisions in accord with His will? Do you comport yourself at all times in a way that will be pleasing to Him? Do you take peace, even in the face of a terminal diagnosis or the loss of material security, that all will be well in the end? Do you give thanks as age overtakes you knowing that the Kingdom cannot be far from here?

Alternatively, do you believe that by compromising your faith, you will break relationship with God? That by "going it alone," you most certainly will be alone? Do you believe that the loss of God and His angels leaves you quite over-your-head and that spiritual warfare is furious, swift, and merciless? We must always remember the power of our sovereign freedom and that our individual fates and the world's destiny lie always within our hands. This is God's great gift to us. For "the Heavens, are the Lord's; / But the earth He has given to the children of men"   (Ps 115:16).

In a dream, Joseph was directed by an angel to be espoused to Mary. And he was espoused to her. In a dream, Joseph was told by an angel to take the Mother and Child to Egypt. And he did trek more than four hundred miles through a wilderness with the fragile and precious Mother and Child in tow.

In our ego and pridefulness, we might have responded differently. Concerning the question of marriage, the "prudent" man might have said, "You want me to do what?! To marry a woman whose life is scandal? I am a man of reputation and public honor! Certainly, I will donate money to her!" Concerning the trek to Egypt, the "prudent" man might have said, "You want me to do what?! Walk four hundred miles through a wilderness to Egypt carrying a woman who has just given birth and a frail newborn infant? Anyway, I don't see any imminent danger to them!" Or like Zechariah standing at the Altar of Incense, the "prudent" man might have said, "How shall I know you are an angel?!" Or, even more likely, the "prudent" man would say, "Shall I go to these furthest extremes because I had a dream last night?!"

Those closer to the end of their spiritual journeys than to the beginning will affirm that this is how God works. Certainly, He communicates to us in dreams. Certainly, we are surrounded by angels. And most certainly, His signature act is to call us away from safety, security, and independence. Moreover, He is the Master of all timings (Mt 24:36). And He communicates His will to us using uncanny coincidences (what C.S. Lewis calls "God-incidences"). Though it seem lunacy to a practical and skeptical world, God summons us out of our little spheres of self-reliance. For complete dependence upon Him is always His plan for us. And we are left with "the evidence of things not seen. For by it, the Elders obtained a good testimony" (Heb 11:1-2). This was the invariable experience of the Patriarchs.

The overarching meaning of the Scriptures for the holy ones is to rely on God and Him alone. Each one He has touched from Adam to Noah to Abraham to Moses to Joseph the Betrothed to Jesus of Nazareth, knows God to be a Director. He gives direction, and His will is not open to negotiation (as if we ever knew a better way or had discovered an angle He had not thought of!). This is His hallmark: definite and specific direction. We are either with Him cooperating and giving thanks for Divine fellowship and participation, or we become one of myriad problems confronting Him. This is the golden thread running through every life He has ever called.

Do we believe the answer can ever be, "No"? That Joseph might simply say, "No"? He did hesitate once. We read in the Protoevanglion of St. James (written by his son) that when God had chosen Him to be protector of the Most Holy Theotokos, he balked.

You see, the most sober and devout widowers had been gathered at the Temple that God might choose a faithful custodian of Ever-Virgin Mary. That she was holy was generally understood. The stories of Anne and Joachim were widely attested. Her personal holiness was palpable, known to all who met her. She had been raised in the Zion Temple "as if she were a dove that dwelt there, and she received food from the hand of an angel" (Protoevanglion of St. James, 8). But who would be her guardian at age twelve? For the Law forbade menstruation within the Temple's precincts. A Dove emerged from the top of Joseph's rod and alighted on his head. God had chosen him.

Yes, Joseph had answered the summons by the Temple authorities to join others of his age and standing — a public recognition that he was a just and righteous man. But he never suspected that his entire life would be stood on its head. To become espoused to young Mary? To become a spectacle? How foolish he would look! An elderly man taking a twelve-year-old wife into his home! He imagined the endless jeerings of his neighbors and sons and the loss of all dignity. And he hesitated.

Do you see the pattern? On one side, we might say, thin airy nothings: dreams, the impulses of birds, the nearly inaudible voice of an angel. (By the way, how quiet must your heart be to hear the voice of an angel?) On the other side are things that men rely on: practicality, proportion, and the "sensible" course.

From our perspective two millennia later, the correct answer for Joseph is seen to be obvious. We see it all so clearly having benefit of God's long view. But I wonder how clear-sighted we would be if this had been our dilemma. I wonder how faithful we would be if God should direct us to scrap our entire lives .... all because we believe He is calling us. The High Priest confronts the dithering Joseph: "Have you no fear of God?!"

What is it that trips us up at such moments? Expectations. A child in his innocence would have less difficulty following God's call. For he is yet to be formed in the world's expectations or fears: fear of castigation, fear of public humiliation, fear of the opinion of peers. Without these expectations for common sense, we would be open to whatever God presented to us. It would seem right and natural.

Yet, just as we, two thousand years later, can clearly see the right course for Joseph, it turns out that common sense and practicality are relative. It makes good sense to us that he should marry the twelve-year-old Temple Virgin, that he should walk to Egypt and be led by an angel. These make good, practical sense .... from the long view. And what of his carpenter shop, his reputation in the neighborhood, the care of his barnyard animals? These immediate, daily, and very present concerns are also small potatoes from our longer view. But all this is relative .... to our longer view. So what seemed lunacy on the immediate occasion of a Divine call only a moment ago now makes eminent good sense in perspective. The gap is closed.

What is the difference? What is the difference between things that seemed outlandish a moment ago and things that suddenly make perfect sense? It is our ignorance. We simply do not know what God knows. We famously do not really know the meaning of our own lives.

From God's point of view, the meaning of human life in the great sweep of history is about one subject: a seamless, faithful love between our God and His adopted sons and daughters, ourselves. This is it. There it is: the meaning of life from God's point of view. We see that the Eden story, which is the original scene of this love, is repeated over and over again: the call upon Noah's family and the new creation that lay ahead; the call of Abraham and Sarah into the wilderness that a new people might be born; the Land of Promise and the Twelve Tribes of Israel; .... over and over, God seeks to fulfill this one subject of human history.

Need we wonder what "their religion" looked like? It is obvious. It was the religion of adoption. We might add that this is the desire and will of all parents for their children: having been set apart from the sensual world, dominating the bodily senses, they are free to become what God's sons and daughters are — to fulfill within themselves their inborn nobility, their inborn faithfulness, their inborn Divinity.

You know, I have been taken aside by family members concerning a religious or a priest who confided, "This person never really had a chance before. All those inborn gifts never had a chance to see the sun." That's a family concern. These are family words.

That is, a religion of Theosis was the religion of the Patriarchs: the religion of becoming what we are in our essence. And it remains God's will for us today.

Yet, one thing was lacking in the fallen world. We lacked an Exemplar, an Elder Brother, to show us what we were made to be, what we were made to look like. So our Father sent His Son. His Son, the Heir, was sent into the Vineyard to show us what humans were made to be. The portrait of mankind had been defaced, St. Athanasius wrote. Who is left to sit for the original as Adam and his sons have fallen? The Emperor's image upon the newly minted coin has become indecipherable, wrote Origen. Who will re-strike the coin?

In the icon posted with this reflection, we behold the elderly Joseph on his trek to Egypt. He is custodian of the Most Holy Theotokos, the Mother of all humanity in that sense, and custodian of the Son of God, the Elder Brother of every man and woman born into the world. The carpenter's own son James is with them. (Today we observe the Feast of Joseph the Betrothed and James the Just, among others.) James does not jeer. He follows along faithfully, for he is now part of something far higher and better than neighborhood jest or petty one-ups-manship. He has sobered up. He will record all that has happened in his Protoevangelion and then go on to be the first Bishop of Jerusalem and a leader of the universal Church. God had great plans. All that was required, whether from James or Joseph or Mary, is, "Yes." Fiat mihi secundum Verbum Tuum. "Be it unto me according to Thy Word."

We are left with an image of family — not the family we expected in our ignorance, but the family God has in mind. This is His plan for us: that we claim our Heavenly birthright, that we be crowned with the nobility immanent within us, that we participate in the Divine will. This is adoption. This is Theosis, the religion of Adam, of Noah, of Abraham, and then born into the world in perfection with the Nativity of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.