Advent2025 Waiting With Matthew 11

Day 11: Waiting in Exile. Today we reflect on Matthew 2:14 – “Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt.” Join us this Advent as we sit with the waiting in the first 5 chapters of Matthew's Gospel.

Transcript

Greetings,

My friends.

This is Mark Gladman,

Also known as Brother Frederick James,

Your friendly neighbourhood monk-in-docs.

Welcoming you to Day 11 of Advent 2025,

Waiting with Matthew.

And as we prepare to reflect on our passage today,

Which comes from Matthew 2 and verse 14,

Where Matthew writes,

Then Joseph got up,

Took the child and his mother by night,

And went to Egypt.

I invite you to pause for a moment,

To make yourself comfortable,

To still your mind,

Your heart,

Your body,

To rest in the One who is our rest,

To breathe deeply,

To relax,

And to open our ears,

Our minds,

And our hearts to what the Spirit says to us today.

It's interesting because if you sit long enough with today's verse,

It does something surprising.

It draws you into the quiet courage of a man who never speaks a recorded word.

Matthew gives us no speeches from Joseph,

Only movements,

Only obedience,

Only trust made visible.

We read,

Then Joseph got up,

Took the child and his mother by night,

And went to Egypt.

It happens in the dark.

No one sees them leave.

There are no witnesses,

No farewells,

No explanations.

Only the sound of footsteps in the night,

The hurried bundling of a few belongings and a long road stretching towards a foreign land.

Joseph rises because God has warned him danger is near.

Herod's paranoia is sharpening into violence,

And the only faithful thing to do is leave.

Now this is probably not the story we expect for the Son of God.

We expect glory,

Recognition,

A stable world bending towards its Savior.

And instead,

Jesus' earliest experience is exile.

The Messiah begins his life as a refugee carried into Egypt on the back of a father's obedience and a mother's hope.

Matthew doesn't want us to miss this.

Jesus relives Israel's history.

He enters the place of Israel's ancient captivity,

Egypt.

Not as a prisoner,

But as a hidden seed.

Grace grows in the dark.

Redemption begins in the places we'd rather not go.

And so today,

The scripture invites us to consider our own Egypts.

The seasons we never chose.

The places we didn't want to be.

The waiting we can't escape.

Exile isn't just geographical.

It can be emotional,

Spiritual,

Vocational,

Relational.

Sometimes you wake up and realize you're living in a landscape that you never planned.

Something changed.

Something broke.

Something ended.

And now you're waiting in a place that's not home.

Waiting in exile is different from normal waiting.

Normal waiting is active.

You know what you're waiting for and you can prepare for it.

But waiting in exile,

That's uncertain.

You don't know the timeline.

You don't know the outcome.

You don't know who you'll be when it ends.

You've got no control over this at all.

Joseph and Mary didn't know how long they'd be in Egypt.

They didn't know when Herod would die.

They didn't know how their son's story would unfold.

They only knew the next step.

Leave.

Go.

Wait.

Trust.

The spiritual life is filled with these moments.

Moments when God doesn't give you a map,

Just a direction.

Sometimes faith looks like leaving in the middle of the night,

Carrying only what you can bear and trusting that God will meet you in a land that doesn't feel like home.

But this story teaches us another truth.

That exile is often where God protects what is precious in you.

Egypt,

Which was once the place of bondage,

Becomes the place of safety,

The place of threat,

Becomes the place of protection,

The unfamiliar becomes the shelter,

The foreign land becomes the womb for the next movement of God's story.

God hides you sometimes,

Not to punish you,

Not to abandon you,

But to preserve something within you that's not yet ready for the world.

Waiting in exile is uncomfortable,

But it's also holy.

It's a place where unnecessary ambitions fall away,

Where the heart becomes attentive,

Where God shapes you quietly as he shaped his son in the safety of Egypt.

And perhaps like Joseph,

The spiritual invitation is simply this.

Rise when the spirit prompts.

Take what God entrusts to you.

Walk into the unknown.

Trust that God is weaving your exile into a larger redemption.

You may feel hidden now,

Overlooked,

Between seasons.

But in scripture,

Hiddenness is never the end of the story.

It's always the preparation.

God does some of his best work in the places we least expect.

And sometimes Egypt becomes the only place where the next chapter can begin.

So as you sit with this verse today,

Ask yourself gently,

Where is God calling me to trust in the dark?

Where am I being invited to wait without clarity,

Without timeline,

Without control?

What precious thing is God protecting in me by leading me into a season I didn't choose?

In exile,

We discover again that God is Immanuel.

Not only in Bethlehem's glory,

But also in Egypt's shadows.

And so as we hold the whisperings of the spirit to us from today's reflection,

Quite possibly for many,

Some difficult things that have come from our reflection today.

As you hold them,

Let me hold you with this prayer.

God of the long road and the hidden journey,

Teach us the courage of Joseph to rise when your whisper calls,

To trust you in the places that feel foreign,

To wait without fear in the seasons we didn't choose.

Shelter us in our Egypt.

Let exile become formation.

Guard what is fragile in us until it becomes strong in you.

And when the time is right,

Lead us home.

Amen.

So as we rise from this time to go into the rest of our day,

May you find God in every place that feels unfamiliar.

May you trust what seems like exile is becoming the ground of your transformation.

May you discover that even in the dark,

Grace is guiding your steps.

And may that grace,

Peace and love be in every single one of those steps,

Today and always.

Amen.

Grace and peace,

My friends.

Until tomorrow,

God be with you.

Reviews

Thank you for the reminder that God is with us in the uncertainty of waiting. 🌅💝🙏

This is exactly what I needed to hear today. I'm on an Adoration chapel, and the Holy Spirit guided me here. Thank you.

May God continue to be with you as well ✝️ thank you for your beautiful prayers. This reflection is a comfort for all who are waiting for God’s direction…knowing He is with us always.

Grace & friends to you as well 🙏🏾

Always a message that seems to come directly for me, thank you. I feel like I have been waiting for most of this year and it is comforting to know that I can find God in that space. Thank you 🙏🏻

so much to meditate upon on one short verse. Thank you!🙏🏼