************
I hear her, but I don't want to. I wish she would be quiet, go off and wash the dishes or darn my socks, anything but this. But the damn woman persists.
"Well?"
"What if he's not the son of God, Mary? What if he's just a willful boy? Isn't it our duty to raise him to understand and follow the Mosaic Laws, to be a follower of our faith?"
She just looks at me, raises an eyebrow. Then she mimics holding something in her palm, blowing at it and watching it flutter off into the air. Her message is clear enough.
"All right, I will grant you that he has miraculous powers. And I admit that the angel of the Lord told me himself that you were pregnant with God's only son. But let me remind you of the real and mundane world that we live in, the world from whence the food I put on the table comes. Let me remind you that no one in the village is aware of our son's divine origins. When you returned from visiting your aunt Elizabeth, you were already three months pregnant...."
I see Mary's lips draw into that thin hard line when she thinks I am going to question her again about the nature of her insemination, so I hasten to add: "With the Lord's child."
She nods and cocks her head.
"So I married you in all due haste, and shortly after the nuptials- before you began to show - we left Nazareth to go to Bethlehem and stay with my family so you could have the baby there, just so those with a mind to count the days wouldn't be able to compute the time between our marriage bed and the birth of our first child...not that said marriage bed has yet been entered," I add snidely. "Perhaps someday, if God so wills."
I take satisfaction to see Mary blush and look down, wriggling uncomfortably in her chair. Married for over five years now, and still the Lord has forbade me to know her as a man knows his wife. Nor to know any other woman, for that matter: And I'm still man enough to burn more than prayers and meditation can assuage.
"And then," I continue; "we remained away another two years in Egypt before returning to Nazareth, so no one could really be sure of Yeshua' age. To all our friends and neighbors, Yeshua is just the son of Joseph and Mary, a perfectly ordinary child; so now when they see the things he does, what immediately comes to their minds is that he must be a conjurer or wizard, not a prophet of God. People are much more ready these days to believe in the powers of darkness than in those of the Divine..."
Mary
" ...so far has man fallen away from his maker," I add. "But I completely agree with you my husband; you are right, and this is exactly why God has sent His Son to earth now, to reunite his people with Him. That being so, should we not tell them of Yeshua's divine origins, should we not make known to them the presence of God in their midst, here to redeem them?"
I suddenly feel this so strongly I am shaken to my core with the realization, and I fall to my knees, tears streaming down my face.
"Please, Joseph," I beg; "do you not see this is true?"