{"id":3897,"date":"2015-03-19T18:49:39","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T23:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/?p=3897"},"modified":"2015-03-19T18:58:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T23:58:00","slug":"jesuss-stepdad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2015\/03\/jesuss-stepdad.html","title":{"rendered":"Jesus&#8217;s Stepdad"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>I\u2019ve asked my kids about<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2015\/02\/jesuss-stinky-cousin.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"> John the Baptist<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2014\/12\/the-perfectly-imperfect-mother-of-god.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">the Blessed Mother<\/a>. Today we\u2019re talking about St Joseph because it\u2019s his feast day! As before, I\u2019m in blue and everything else is my children (ages 5-15)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/458\/2015\/03\/joe.png\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-3899\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/458\/2015\/03\/joe-197x300.png\" alt=\"joe\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">Today is the feast of St Joseph, so who was he?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">He was Jesus\u2019s dad!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>No, he wasn\u2019t . God was Jesus\u2019s dad. St Joseph was his step-dad.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s a step-dad?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s like the mom has a baby with someone and then marries someone else. The someone else is the step-dad. He\u2019s like a loaner or a bonus dad.<\/p>\n<p>Was he in the Bible?<\/p>\n<p>Yes. He\u2019s the guy the wisemen gave the presents to, and he pulled the donkey that Mary rode on.<\/p>\n<p>Why did he have to pull the donkey?<\/p>\n<p>They like to dig their feet in and not go. Sometimes you have to drag them.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">Yes, donkeys are stubborn. What about St Joseph, what do we know about him?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">He was a good walker. He walked to Bethlehem. He walked to Egypt. He walked back again. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>He was a carpenter. He made stuff with wood like furniture and doors.<\/p>\n<p>He did? Good for him!<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll bet he had scratchy hands from working with wood all day. Splinters and tools. That stuff has to be hard on your hands. Plus I don\u2019t think they lotioned.<\/p>\n<p>That would be bad for spankings.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, good thing Jesus didn\u2019t get any.<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t?<\/p>\n<p>No. He\u2019s \u201cfree from sin.\u201d Remember?<\/p>\n<p>So that makes Jospeh like the luckiest step-dad ever. Right? He lucked right into the one kid who never was bad. That\u2019s awesome. He like never had to yell. Ever.<\/p>\n<p>He didn\u2019t luck into it. An angel told him to do it, but like in a dream. He never even saw the angel while he was awake. He just had some crazy dream and decided that it must be true.<\/p>\n<p>I dream weird stuff all the time and it\u2019s not ever true. That must have been some crazy dream for him to wake up and be all \u201cWhoa\u2026I should marry that girl who\u2019s pregnant with God\u2019s baby.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He was either really crazy or he believed. A lot.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">Old or young?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Old. Definitely. If he never touched his wife he was an old dude.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>What do you mean he never touched her? How did he help her off the donkey?<\/p>\n<p>Never mind. He was definitely old, Mom. You don\u2019t trust the Son of God to some teenager.<\/p>\n<p>Except Mary.<\/p>\n<p>Right, you don\u2019t give your kid to some kid unless that kid is Mary.<\/p>\n<p>No way. Her parents would never let her marry some old guy. Who would take care of her when he died? She\u2019d have little kids and no one to protect her. That would be dumb of them. He was young but holy.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">Why holy?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Because he listens to angels in dreams at least twice. Which means that angels came to his dreams at least twice. I don\u2019t think they come to unholy people.\u00a0 Plus he didn\u2019t touch her, if you know what I mean.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">I do. Why didn\u2019t he touch her?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">She was like the tabernacle or something holding Jesus in her. Like at church. The only guys who get to touch it are ordained like the priest or deacon. He was a carpenter. He could look but not touch. He was holy, but she was like HOLY. Ya know?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">Do we know a lot about him?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Just that he listened to angels, raised Jesus, and didn\u2019t talk a lot. Because if he\u2019d talked it would be in the Bible. Oh, and he lost Jesus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>He <em>lost<\/em> Him? <em>He had one job<\/em> \u201cRaise my kid.\u201d One job and he lost Him? Can you go to Heaven if you lose God\u2019s Son.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever. They found Him, and he was all \u201cDidn\u2019t you know I\u2019d be in my Father\u2019s house?\u201d That must have hurt his feelings. It\u2019s kind of mean. It\u2019s true, but I\u2019d be sad if my step-kid who I\u2019d raised from a baby said that to me.<\/p>\n<p>He loved Mary enough to protect her from gossips and King Herod. He married her because the dream angel told him to. He wasn\u2019t afraid of hard stuff because \u201cRaise my kid\u201d is like the biggest job ever. He was mostly a regular guy, but weird enough to be like\u2026.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #3366ff;\">Extraordinary?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Yeah. Like a super hero but living always as the alter ego so no one knows his real identity.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>He was a super hero? Did he get a cape?<\/p>\n<p>No. He got a halo.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d rather have a cape.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #339966;\">**Photo: JLPC \/ Wikimedia Commons, via Wikimedia Commons<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve asked my kids about John the Baptist and the Blessed Mother. Today we\u2019re talking about St Joseph because it\u2019s his feast day! As before, I\u2019m in blue and everything else is my children (ages 5-15) \u00a0 Today is the feast of St Joseph, so who was he? He was Jesus\u2019s dad! No, he wasn\u2019t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,5,42,95,9,26,25],"class_list":["post-3897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholic","tag-faith","tag-family","tag-mary","tag-parenting","tag-people","tag-thinking"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Jesus&#039;s Stepdad<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I&#039;ve asked my kids about John the Baptist and the Blessed Mother. Today we&#039;re talking about St Joseph because it&#039;s his feast day! 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