A Christmas fantasy by Rev Presley B Lyngdoh
THEY CAME down our way, the man and his young wife. I was watching them.
When they came to our house and saw me standing at the door, they stopped and the man asked me, “Excuse me, Sir, do you by any chance know any place where we could get lodging until this census is over? You see, though I live at Nazareth, I belong here, and they would not let me register there. They said I had to come to my home town. So my wife and I have had to come here. I have tried all the families I know and every place seems to be full up.”
At that I called my wife and asked her whether she thought we could help at all.
Well, practically every house had someone staying, and we already had our cousins with us. It is one thing to put up one’s relations and quite another to have strangers in the house. I suppose I could have made room for them somehow.
The man looked all right. He was very well spoken and she looked very graceful and quiet. But I could not help noticing that she was, and suppose the baby was born while they were in our house. Just think what it would be, with a house already full of guests. “I should have liked to help you,” I said, “but our house is full of guests already. However, you may try the stable…”
If only we had known who these people were and what their baby was destined to be, we should have gladly made room for them in our house. But how could we know?
Then – it was only a day or two later after that – I remember the census was not yet finished – my two young boys came running in with shining eyes. “Daddy, come,” they cried.
“Come? Come where? What has happened?” I asked.
“Come to the stable. Their baby has been born!” And they proceeded to tell me the whole story. They had been going every day to the stable and talking to the man. They told me his name was Joseph. They had helped him a bit when he was tidying the stable and fixing up something round the stable to keep out the cold at night.
This was not the end of the story. I had wondered where my boys had been late that night without telling me. They said they both had felt a sudden impulse that they must go and see Joseph and his wife. And so they had been on time to meet a bunch of shepherds who had come in straight from the fields. This was an amazing thing. These shepherds were telling everyone that they had seen angels in the fields, who had told them to go and look for a new born baby in a manger, and they were asking everyone, “Where is the new born baby?” Of course no one knew what on earth they were talking about. But my boys knew. It was they who took the shepherds along. As they went, the shepherds told them what the angels had said, “Go to Bethlehem, and you will find a baby lying in a manger, all wrapped properly in swaddling clothes. He is your Saviour, the Messiah.
So I went, and there was that sweet child (God bless him) with his mother and Joseph.
If only we had known that day when they came to our door so tired, we should never have let them go away. I had said “No” because I was too much concerned for our own convenience, too anxious about our own comfort, too worried about the relations in the house.
Yet we could have made room, if only we had known. My boys did say, “Daddy, couldn’t we put them up?” And I had told them to be quiet. Oh, if only we had known that is the point.