Advent Begins Here

Last week I watched an interview that unsettled me in a way I wasn’t expecting. A woman was describing a dream she once had—one of those rare dreams that feels more real than real life. She called it lucid. She knew she was dreaming, yet everything in the dream carried weight, texture, consequence.

In the dream, she was pregnant. At first, that alone should have been enough to wake her. But it didn’t. Time kept moving. She felt the pain of childbirth. She gave birth to a son. And still—she didn’t wake up. Days passed. Then years.

She raised that child in the dream. She celebrated birthdays. She watched him grow. She lived an entire life alongside him—forty years of it. And all the while, she was aware that somewhere else, her real life was waiting. Her real family. Her pets. Her home. She said the strangest part wasn’t living the dream—it was missing her real life while trapped inside another one. Then she finally woke up.

The dream had only lasted one night. But when she opened her eyes, she said the grief hit her like a death. The son she had raised for forty years was gone. He never existed—and yet the loss was real. That story lingers with you because it exposes something true about us: when life interrupts us deeply enough, it doesn’t feel temporary—it feels permanent. Interruptions don’t announce themselves as brief detours. They arrive like a new reality. Matthew chapter one tells us about another dream—but this one begins with an interruption long before it becomes a gift.

Joseph is engaged. He has a plan. A future that makes sense. A wedding on the calendar. A life that follows the rules and stays within the lines. And then—without warning—everything unravels. Mary is pregnant. And Joseph knows one thing for certain: the child is not his.

There is no angel yet. No explanation. No reassurance. No “God is doing something beautiful.” Just shock. Just heartbreak. Just a decision he never wanted to make. Matthew tells us Joseph is a righteous man. That means he’s trapped between obedience and compassion. If he follows the law publicly, Mary is ruined. If he acts quietly, his own reputation takes the hit. Either way, the future he thought he was building is gone. Joseph lies down to sleep that night with a life he no longer recognizes.

And that is when God shows up. Not with a suggestion. Not with a gentle nudge. But with an announcement that will cost Joseph his comfort, his control, and his carefully constructed plans. This is where Advent really begins—not with candles or carols, but with disruption. Because here’s the hard truth we don’t like to admit: God often arrives as an interruption before He reveals Himself as a gift.

We don’t handle interruptions well. They bring confusion. Stress. That sinking feeling of not knowing what to do next. So we scramble for answers—self-help books, quick fixes, spiritual shortcuts—anything that promises clarity and peace without disruption. They offer to do the work for us if we just following along, do everything in the right steps and everything will just fall into place, all of this for just one low price.

Some people even believe that coming to Christ will smooth everything out. That faith means clarity. Direction. A neatly labeled path forward. That once Jesus enters the picture, life becomes calm and manageable. But that’s not what happens here. And it’s not what happens in real life either.

When Christ entered Mary and Joseph’s story, there was no peace, there was nothing that looked like peace—at least not at first. There was fear. Risk. Rumors. Whispers. Questions with no easy answers. They were caught in an impossible position, living inside an interruption they never asked for. Society dictated the rules they were to follow and to follow them meant that both of them would be ruined in one way or the other. They had no easy answer to anything. They were alone. And justifiably so, scared to death. And yet—somehow—they found something to hold onto. What could that have been?

We don’t know much about Joseph. He appears briefly and then fades into the background of the gospel story. But I’ll tell you this, we know the most important thing about him: he obeyed God when obedience made his life harder, not easier. Joseph’s life was changed and it was in a dream that he found himself in a position he could have never imagined. He didn’t ask for it, all he wanted was to go live his life as a carpenter. Have a wife, a few kids, a decent life, just the normal things and then God just takes Joseph’s plan, doesn’t change them completely, He just alters them. God didn’t take away his life, He added himself into it. Just like He wants to be added into yours.

Dreams can be confusing, cause us to question what is real or imagined, losing a son that never existed or gaining one you can’t explain. Joseph has a dream. And in that dream, an angel says, “Do not be afraid.” Not, “This will be easy.” Not, “Everyone will understand.” Just—“Do not be afraid.” The angel calls him “Joseph, son of David,” reminding him of who he is, where he comes from, and what God is doing through him—even when he can’t see it yet.

Most of us don’t make life-altering decisions based on dreams. But this one was different. This dream asked Joseph to go against logic, reputation, and expectation—and trust that God’s interruption was actually God’s invitation.

Coming to Christ doesn’t mean confusion disappears. It means our lives are disrupted at their deepest level—our sin, our pride, our need for control. Christ didn’t come to preserve the life we planned. He came to redeem it. And like Joseph, we are left with a choice. What decision will you make when confronted with an interruption you didn’t plan on or even the ones that are inevitable that we must face in life? The life changing interruptions could also be a God given invitation. An invitation into a story, a circumstance that didn’t come simply to hurt us, but to help us become the person that God wants us to be.

We are faced with interruptions every day, some small, some large but ones where we must decide what to do. How many times have you set in your car, on your couch wandering what you’re going to do when faced with a problem you can’t control, a grief you feel like you’ll never heal from, a pain that runs so deep you feel it in your bones and it rocks you to your very core?

I believe that we all have experienced this at times in our life where we just don’t know what to do. We want to control it, fix it and we may believe that if we try hard enough that we can find a solution and everything will be better but in the back of our mind we know we can’t. We know that we don’t have the answer and we move from a place of pain to a place of nothingness. It’s like watching a balloon with a small hole in it loosing air slowly and just collapses in on itself. We feel the life draining from our body.

I imagine this is the place Joseph was in. Nothing made sense. He was going to have to face a world that by it’s own rules would be against him. He had no answers. But there was one thing he did have. He had an invitation to step into the greatest story ever told, the greatest life ever lived. He had an invitation to be a part of the redemption story of God. It was a small role, a supporting role, be he was in it and that’s all that mattered. He had an angel telling him not to be afraid.

We may not receive an angelic dream, but we do encounter Christ. And when we do, we have to decide whether we will cling to the life we had planned—or trust the God who interrupts us and promises, in the end, to be God with us. Even here. Even now. Even in the confusion. Even with Joseph. Even with us.

God often arrives in the odd moments, the moments we don’t expect, the moments that are the most inconvenient times. It’s almost as if He wants to show up when we can be at our lowest, weakest and tired. Joseph was all of these things, he had decisions to make but he knew he wasn’t alone. But, he wasn’t really sure what he had either.

Joseph had plans for his life, big plans but all that changed. Life as he knew it was over and maybe there were times he just wanted to give up. But in the midst of his problem as he knew it, God showed up and lead Joseph to a new life, one that he could have never imagined. God will often arrive as an interruption before He reveals Himself as a gift. Out of confusion came confession. Disruption brought peace.

What can look like an interruption in our life could be the invitation from God we’ve been waiting for. Or the invitation we never saw coming.