So often we think of family as being the people we’re born with. In God’s family, and throughout the whole of Scripture, we see something different: we are the family of God though adoption, and the miracle of Christmas is the final adoption of creation by God as Jesus adopts human flesh to become one of us. 

The Fourth Sunday of Advent offers a more subtle Christmas miracle though, that through Joseph’s faithfulness, humanity adopts God right back. 

In Christ through baptism, we enter God’s family through adoption, and it’s a family in which water is thicker than blood.

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