At the beginning of a new year lots of us try to find something we can implement in our lives that makes it better. Or that makes us better.

Some of the things in our lives that we think are keeping us from serving the Lord are actually ways we are serving the Lord. We just may not recognize them in that way because they feel so mundane. We care for homes and families. We make a living. But, we wonder, how do I fit into God’s plan for the world.

A New Years sermon I heard helps in thinking this through. The pastor said a good New Years Resolution would be to make a “robust commitment to understand God’s great plan and my part in it.” The message was about Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph. Joseph was a simple carpenter who could have had his life derailed when his virgin fiancée turned up pregnant. But He knew his Bible. Plus, an angel spoke to him and explained what to do. In his message about this, David Roseberry at Christ Church Anglican, said Joseph was able to see his life attached to the vision of what God was doing in the world. As events unfolded, he knew what to do.

Joseph decided to go ahead with the engagement. He took Mary to Bethlehem to register for the census, obeying Rome’s decree. Instead of returning home, they took their son to Egypt to save Him from Herod’s henchmen. Then, when Herod was dead, Joseph moved the family to Nazareth. He raised Jesus. But you see no more about him in scripture.

He certainly did a good job, though. When Jesus was baptized, His Father in heaven said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased.” Part of that could have been a message to Joseph: ‘Mission accomplished.’

Father Roseberry listed some of the things Jesus likely learned to do well from Joseph: a trade (carpentry), to honor women, to care well for children.

Joseph was not Jesus’s biological father. Father Roseberry referred to him as a “borrowed Dad,” saying Joseph submitted everything in his life to be the borrowed father of Jesus. God, he said, “is a borrower of things and people.” Jesus had everything, but in life he possessed nothing. He was always borrowing: beds to sleep in, homes to stay in, a donkey to ride into Jerusalem on. God borrowed Mary’s womb for Jesus to be born in. Even the tomb Christ was buried in belonged to someone else. (And He was only there a little while.)

Joseph is an example for each of us to submit ourselves to be a borrowed person. David Roseberry encouraged his congregation to say, “Use me” as Joseph did.

God works in and through His people. When we see ourselves as part of God’s larger narrative, even the mundane or difficult tasks we are ‘borrowed’ to accomplish become a privilege.