The Bethlehem Star

The Bethlehem Star
Pg. XXIV
various strips of cloths that kept his arms and his legs close
against his body for warmth—swaddling cloths, just as we
were told. He was sleeping as peacefully as any baby I’d
ever seen.
It was just as the messengers had said.
When I took it all in, I couldn’t help but fall to my
knees. My III brothers and Toby did the same. And we all
started to cry. IV grown men and a boy, kneeling in a rundown
stable, staring at a sleeping baby, and crying our eyes
out. Now it was the young Joseph who was mystified. As I
recall, he just stood there staring at us, at his young wife, and
at his newborn baby.
After a moment, the young woman finally said to us,
“Are you gentlemen all right? Can we help you somehow?”
“Please sit,” young Joseph told us, “and I will
prepare all of us warm drinks. Please. Sit.”
We sat back then, and I said to my brothers, “It is
true. The vision was true. It is him. It must be him.” And we
all just sat there and stared at that beautiful, peaceful, rolypoly
little baby. On hearing our words, though, I noticed
Joseph give a nervous, almost furtive look to his wife, and
she returned the same to him.
After only a few minutes, Joseph brought us warmed
goat’s milk, into which he had inserted some odd little stick
of spice. Whatever it was, it was delicious; and it was warm.
But it was delicious. Boy that hit the spot!
We thanked him profusely for
warming us up, although he had already
been successful in bringing warmth to this
otherwise barren stable with just a small
fire built against one of the corner rock
faces. Of course, the body heat from the
pigs, a couple of sheep, a small flock of
hens, a single donkey, a rather large plow
horse, and one enormous ox—must have
been that Goliath that Zacchaeus is always
bragging about—seemed to help heat the
place up a little as well. The smell of the
place, though, was horrendous. I thought
my nose was going to fall off, it was so
bad. In fact, at first when we entered, it
made me want to gag. But, after a short
while, and the delicious drink, I guess you
sorta got used to it.
And then Joseph introduced his
wife.
“This is my wife, Mary,” he said,
“and may we ask your names?”
Thomas, the eldest, of course,
answered, “I’m Thomas, son of Isaac ben
Jehudah of Bethlehem, and these are my
III brothers: our twins, Samuel and John,
and Benjamin, our youngest.” And then,
motioning to little Tobias, he added, “And this is
Benjamin’s firstborn son, Toby.”
Joseph looked at Toby with very kind eyes,
noticing his little drums. “I see that you are a
musician,” he said. But Toby just blushed and
slipped behind his Dad’s backside.
And then, a little anxiously, Thomas asked,
“Joseph, um, ...er, ...uh, when was ...your baby
born?”
The big young man just smiled. Then he
reached down and carefully, very gently lifted his
tiny son from the manger, from beneath the cuddling
arms of his Mary, and he raised the infant to his chest
and cradled him ever so softly against himself,
looking down as lovingly as any proud new father I
have ever seen, and he said, “He came to us no more
than an hour ago.” You are the very first visitors to
greet our firstborn son into the world.”
I couldn't help but smile just to look at such
proud new parents. Benjamin immediately began to
cry again, ...but he even cried at Helga’s wedding,
and absolutely nobody agreed with the matchmaker
on that one.
Then I asked Joseph, “Joseph, have you
decided on a name for your son?”
Our artist’s sketch of the shepherds’ visit to young Joseph and Mary, who
actually gave birth to their firstborn son this month, unfortunately, in the
rundown stable behind the Servants’ Palace Inn of the miser Zacchaeus
at the end of IVth Street. Joseph and Mary, both from Nazareth of
southern Galilee, have named their newborn infant “Jesus.”