You talk about embarrassing! This whole winter has been one long disaster. I honestly don’t know where to begin. I guess I need to start with the obvious.
I waited a long time to get married. I’m fairly well established in my father’s business now. I don’t make a lot of money but I make a living. Anyway, along comes this girl one day. I’ll never forget that she wanted a large bowl for preparing food. I had just finished a really big one and I promised her that when the oil I used to preserve the wood was dry she could buy it. Who knows? Maybe I just wanted her to come back to my shop. Well she did come back and when she left with the bowl I couldn’t help thinking she could probably bathe in it she was so small and it was so big.
Well, in the natural way of things it seems I started bumping into her in different places around our town. One thing led to another and the short story is that her father agreed that we could marry. We had a great time making the announcement. She looked very beautiful to me as we pronounced before our family and friends our promise to be faithful to each other. Of course for me this meant that I had a lot more work to do. You shouldn’t marry if you can’t afford a wife that’s for sure. I could afford her of course but still there was a lot of preparation, especially converting my bachelor quarters into some kind of livable place.
So what was I supposed to think when this darling girl gave me some crazy story about being pregnant? And get this. She’s not just pregnant, which was then becoming obvious, but she expects me to believe that she’s been completely faithful to me and this pregnancy is from God! I wish she’d tell me the truth. My mind conjures up all kinds of worst case scenarios. I think I could handle the worst case scenario better than this fabricated excuse for infidelity.
Naturally the neighbors talked. You can’t help noticing the old gossips when you go to the market or the sly, side of the mouth comments passed between the men. Everyone knew pretty fast that my charming, sweet bride was in some trouble. I really didn’t know what to do. By rights I should have taken her outside the town and insisted that she be killed. I had a perfect right to do this. So why didn’t I you ask?
Well that’s the weird part, or at least part of the weird part. I didn’t want her to be killed. After all that’s pretty permanent. No, I was ready to just send her back to her own father. Let him deal with her as he saw fit. I just didn’t want to go through the wedding. I figured that with a little time I might get my reputation back and when the baby came the gossips could figure out pretty quickly who the papa was.
But get this, I was sound asleep and had this really crazy dream where an angel told me that my sweet little bride’s words were true! I was told to go ahead and marry her and when the baby came I was to name him Joshua because he would save his people. Joshua ben Joseph. Or Joshua ben … who, God? Now honestly, when do we ever actually believe our dreams?
So now I’ve got Mary talking to me about a holy miracle baby and I’ve got this crazy dream bouncing around in my head and people snickering behind my back and I just don’t know what to do. I mean on the one hand I think I believe Mary and I just want to wring the necks of the gossips but on the other hand, when I try to think what I would say to those old grannies, I hardly believe it myself. So I bit my lip a lot and tried to ignore the snorts and chuckles. I really think by not saying anything it made them laugh at me even more but what could I say? Really?
Then, just when I was finally settling into the idea that my first born would not, well, be my first born the powers that be in far off Rome decided that we needed to register with the government. They call it a census but everyone understands that we are going to pay more taxes ha ha! Naturally we can’t register where we live. Instead, I have to go south to the town where my family’s great original ancestor was born and register there. So now I lose several days of business plus I have the expense of travel plus I get to spend who knows how long in lines here and there registering my name for the governor and Caesar and every other hack politician in line with his hand out. And…I get to walk all the way there and all the way back. It’s just a scam to get more of my money.
Mary had to register too so she came with me. She was actually pretty amazing considering she was very heavy with child by then. It’s a long walk and we had to take it pretty slow. Her feet swelled up and we had to stop a lot. I’d rub her feet while she’d rub my shoulders which were sore from the heavy pack I carried. Maybe it was because we had to travel so much more slowly than everybody else, I don’t know but when we got to Bethlehem the place was crawling with people. Our great great great whatever grandpa sure has a big family and Bethlehem is a small place.
Mary was having a low backache and said she was pretty sure the baby was about to arrive. That made me a bit bolder to ask for help. “Look at my wife” I’d say. “She’s nearly in labor standing here. Are you really going to turn her away?” I saw a lot of red faces and heard a lot of embarrassed excuses but the fact was, there just wasn’t any place. I mean I really turned that town upside down and there wasn’t a bed anywhere.
As the evening grew dark we wound up at the edge of town where I spied a barn with a little clean straw lying in a corner. I asked the owner if we could please just sleep there one night. He looked at me and then at Mary, and maybe it was coincidence or something else but just at that moment she bent over with pain. I guess we looked so worn out that he relented.
We walked into the barn which was really more of a dugout in the side of a hill with a stone half-wall in front. We sat together on the small pile of straw and I hung my head. Some kind of husband I was. I couldn’t even get a decent place for my wife to have her first child. I was ashamed to even look at her and I suppose I was as close to crying as I have ever been. Those old granny gossips back home just made me mad. This lousy barn was horrible and I was helpless. I couldn’t even get a mid-wife for Mary. Talk about embarrassing.
Maybe two hours later, Mary was really struggling. I’m no expert but it seemed really tough for her though in between the hard times, she kept saying that this was pretty normal and what she had expected. Her face was still girlish and beautiful even in the strain of labor. I looked at her lying on the straw and realized that whatever else this pregnancy had done, it confirmed that I really loved her.
Well I may be one of the rare men of Israel who have actually witnessed the birth of a child. There was no one else to help. Mary has seen several babies born and was pretty well in control and she told me what to do. First of all, the baby was a boy. When we saw that, we both whispered “Joshua” together and for maybe two full minutes we just marveled at a perfectly formed little baby boy.
When babies are born it’s pretty dramatic and, well, there is no way to be delicate, it’s really gory. We needed water and towels. Fortunately the water was close even though it was cold water. I had a sharp knife to cut the birth cord and we used my spare shirt to wipe everything up. Mary promised to wash it as soon as she could and I told her not to worry about it. But then we had to wrap the baby up in something. Mary was going to use her underskirt but I went to the house of our host and pounded on the door until someone woke up and yelled at me. I yelled right back that I needed some help. Finally the man’s wife opened the door and offered me a baby blanket – several strips of cloth with which to wrap up our little Joshua.
When I got back, Mary was nursing the little guy and he really knew his business. I guess he was hungry. Finally he was sleeping and Mary wrapped him up tightly in the cloth strips while I tried to figure out where to put him. I finally put some straw into the cattle trough and Mary laid Joshua in there. I gave her a kiss on the forehead, still moist from her hard work and she told me she needed to rest a while.
As they lay sleeping within the little barn, I sat in the dirt of the doorway and looked first at them and then up at the stars and wondered where all this would lead. I’d always figured I could handle what life would send me. I thought I was a good provider and I really did love my wife. But if this little fellow was really the Son of God, like Mary said, what was he doing lying in a slobbery old cattle trough? I looked up at the stars and said, “God, yonder lies your son. We had to borrow the clothes and we had to borrow the cow trough and we are far from home. I am so sorry. This is a pretty poor start for us and I wonder why you picked me to be this boy’s father. I’m a failure already and I’m ashamed.
Sometimes it takes a while for night noises to penetrate and so I did not hear the hubbub out on the street until it was quite close. In fact, Mary was awake first and she put a reassuring hand on little Joshua since he was also stirring. Can you imagine our surprise when three rough country men, smelling badly of sheep and smoke rather loudly marched up to the doorway of the barn and tried to see in? I had my knife but it was pretty small against three of them and I noticed they had knives to. They didn’t seem interested in me or in Mary though. They grew very quiet when they spotted the baby. They elbowed each other like men do sometimes and quietly knelt on the floor. Each one tried to say something but after the loud talk coming in they seemed strangely shy.
Again I felt shame as the men stared at our baby. Apparently shepherds are not as shocked as others might have been about our unorthodox use of a cow trough. They didn’t seem to notice where we were in any case; they had eyes only for the baby.
Mary broke the ice by asking simply, “Why are you here?” The words tumbled out then. Angels, big angels, announcements, a baby who was the Messiah of God. It took a while for the story to come out but basically they were in our barn looking at our little Joshua because an Angel told them to come and see the Messiah of God. Then they grew quiet again and after a few more minutes they backed out the door. I say quietly but that lasted only till they got to the main street. I could hear them shouting and even knocking on doors up and down the block. I felt myself cringing again as the shouting went on. You don’t suppose those fellows could be a bit quieter in the middle of the night do you?” I asked. The neighbors weren’t too happy but big burly shepherds with exciting news are hard to ignore.
2 comments:
Beautiful! Such an enjoyable perspective of the birth of our Lord Jesus.
Thank you, Lynne!
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