Day 13 - Joseph

 Today's Angels are more from the White House School.

Through the years, the voice of the Angel stayed with him. He was a craftsman, who knew his way around a piece of wood, not a priest who knew his way around the scriptures; nevertheless, he always tried to be a decent man and do the decent thing. When Mary had come to him, told him, hadn't he tried to be reasonable? To break things off quietly, not heaping on even more disgrace than she would surely receive? And then had come, in his sleep that night, the Angel's voice: "Don't be afraid. It's true. Mary's child is God's promised one." He'd needed to hear it; and as the years went by, he still needed to hear it. The hurried wedding; the knowing looks around the town; the comments about how the child "doesn't look much like you"; the anger at the whispers about his beloved wife. Without the Angel's voice, would he have had the strength to shrug it all off? To have treated the boy as his own? He'd needed that memory: that knowledge that, in his own way, he had been chosen too. He would always remember the voice of the Angel.