The Bethlehem Star

The Bethlehem Star
Pg. XXV
And he looked at me, and then he looked at his wife,
and he said, “Yes, we have called him ‘Yeshua.’”
I looked at my brothers, and then back at Joseph and
Mary, and I said, “That is a fine name for your son. Yeshua
shall become a great name among our Aramaic-speaking
people. And yet, I suspect the world shall know him by the
Greek; they’ll know him by the name of ‘Jesus.’”
Joseph and Mary both looked at me, then, and I
could see their concern. So my brothers and I began to tell
them of everything that we had witnessed that evening up on
the hill, and how we had found them by what the messenger
had said, and soon after as
well by the light of the bright
new star above them.
We talked well into
the night and, although she
must surely have been
exhausted, Mary was so
incredibly gracious in her
concern for our needs as her
guests, ...in another man’s
animal barn! She even
allowed each of us to hold
their son, even if for only a
brief moment. Even Toby.
Luckily, the little guy never
did awaken, but slept very
peacefully all through the
night.
At one point, of
course, we sent Benjamin
quickly back up the hill to
fetch Snowball, our whitest,
calmest, and the most prolific producer of wool in our entire
flock. And we offered him to this Joseph and Mary as a gift
at the birth of their first child. With the four head of sheep
that Zacchaeus had already put in there for the night, I’m not
sure that this was the best, but it was the very best that we
Mary of Nazareth, wife of Joseph, mother of a
newborn son, Jesus, who looks like she’ll be an
absolutely wonderful mother for a very fine
little boy.
had to offer. Myself, I know, I was very very proud to be
able to offer our finest prize sheep to so fine a young couple
as this. “If these two beautiful young people were to be the
ones chosen to raise our Messiah,” I thought, “then let us do
whatever we can to ease their road ahead.” I just hoped our
father would understand. He had had big plans for Snowball
for next year’s Harvestfest competitions.
As for Toby, well, young Mary had been watching
him all the while we were there, playing sort of those peek-aboo
games with him that adults sometimes do with young
kids. Toby kept staring at her, of course. So she’d steal a
glance at him, and Toby’d quickly turn his eyes away, and
tuck down a little farther behind his Dad. She’d smile, then, a
beautiful, warm, motherly smile, by the way— made me
sorta jealous—and, eventually, he’d peek out from
behind his dad to see if she was looking. And when
she did, the game would continue all over again.
I had to admire this young woman. She had
to be exhausted. She had to have wanted a little
quiet time with her new baby. And there she was,
wide awake all of a sudden in the middle of one of
the coldest nights of the year, confined to a
rundown, smelly animal barn, playing eye tag with a
shepherd kid she’d only met a short time ago.
Finally, when the conversation among all of
us finally began to slow, my
brothers began drifting off to
sleep. Now only the crackling of
the small fire and the muffled
sounds of the winter wind outside
could be heard. Mary leaned way
over then, and drew close to little
Toby. She touched him lightly on
the arm and asked him if he would
be kind enough to play a little of
his music for her newborn son.
I watched Toby, through my
half-sleeping, but now curious
eyes. He seemed surprised, but
genuinely delighted that anyone
should request the music of his
crude little drums. But, then, with
all the pride and reverence he
could muster with those tiny hands
of his, he sat up straight, set his
two small drums before him and
began, lightly at first, to tap away—
the two different-sized drums making, actually, sort
of a pleasant pa-rum-pum-pum-pum sound. And
only then, for the first time in his short little life, did
the baby Jesus stir in his sleep and seem to smile.
It was a moment,” Samuel said, “that I shall
never forget as long as I live.”
So there you have it, readers. We all see that
star. No one else that I’ve talked to has yet claimed
to have heard singing, or to have had a vision about
the coming Messiah. But wouldn’t it be something if
what this Samuel says is actually true.
For now, at least, it sure does make for a
great story!