I don’t remember another time when I was so unable to sleep. The moon was high overhead and my family was piled in cots and mats around the room, the sound of their snoring the only sound touching my ears that night. Or was it? I slipped from beneath the warm arm of my husband and headed to the window. The night was quiet, the sky full of stars. I looked up into the vast expanse, quite shocked to realize that the brightness flooding the window was not the moon, but a star. I had never seen such a light in the night star before. Something deep within told me I would never see it again. It seemed to cast its brilliant light right over the heart of Bethlehem.
That’s when I heard what had awakened me. A baby’s cry. I knew the sound well. I hesitated, looking back to check on my own little ones as they slept on, then I pulled my heavy cloak around me, gathered a few supplies from my store, and headed down the road to follow the tiny cry.
As I walked, I tried to imagine what little one would be making an appearance. There were no babies due this month. I would have known, I was the town’s only midwife. I remembered then that there were quite a few visitors due to the Roman taxation. Every house was filled to overflowing. It must be one of those weary travelers giving birth this night. My pace quickened.
The sound led me not to a house but to a cave, cut out of the rock to provide shelter for animals. Surely no baby was entering the world in a cold and dark place such as this. My heart went out to whoever the unfortunate family must be.
But the cave wasn’t so dark. The light from that star above just happened to shine through the doorway, as if Yahweh Himself had ordered such an illumination on just such a place. I pushed my way through the animals, huddled together trying to keep warm, and came upon the little family just beyond the animals, resting in the hay. A tiny babe was lying upon the hay in the manger screaming his little heart out as a frightened father tried to tend to an exhausted mother. My expert eyes quickly noticed that there was too much blood. This woman needed my help.
“I’m a midwife.” I found my voice, hurrying to her and gently pushing the young man out of the way. “Hold the baby close to keep him warm. Wrap him in these.” I handed him some cloths I had grabbed from my supply.
“Grave clothes?”
“They are all I had. But they’ll keep him warm. Wrap him snugly then hold him inside your cloak.”
I turned my attention back to the baby’s mother. She gave me a grateful glance before she succumbed to her fatigue as I began to massage her abdomen to release the afterbirth. I managed the bleeding as best I could with the herbs and preparations I had on hand, offering a prayer that Yahweh might spare her life. When she seemed to be doing better, I reached again for the child, unwrapping him to wash him clean and rub oil and salt on his baby soft skin. He was a bit on the small side; I assumed that they had not been expecting him to come so early. But he seemed healthy with a hearty cry and wide, alert eyes, peering from their darkness to observe me so closely I almost felt that he could see within my heart.
“You’ve a special boy here.” I smiled at the parents, finding myself almost unwilling to hand the child back to his mother to nurse. She was tired, but I assured her that the nursing would hasten her healing. The child quickly began to eat, as if he wished to spare his mother further suffering as a result of his birth.
“He is special.” The father said softly. “He’s the Messiah.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that statement from a proud mama or abba. But the way he spoke it, as if he realized the great weight resting on his shoulders for the responsibility, I almost found myself believing it might be true. I smiled at him.
“I hope you’re right.”
After a few moments of silence, I spoke again. “What will his name be?”
“Jesus.” It was the mother who spoke now. Her husband nodded in agreement.
“Jesus. I have a Jesus myself. Good name. Means ‘savior.’”
“Yes it does.” The man nodded once more.
When I was sure that the mama and baby would make it through the night, I slipped away and left the new family to get to know one another. As I made my way back up the hill to my home, I was struck by the odd way the boy had come into the world. Could a child have a more humble birth? Who would expect a tiny child of a poor family from the north who had been born in a stable, of all things – to be the Messiah that would save his people? Certainly not I.
But the Scriptures said that the one we should look for would come from Bethlehem. There wasn’t a soul that resided here that didn’t know that for a fact.
Maybe Yahweh had sent him quietly into the world, while we were sleeping. Maybe that’s the way He had always intended that he should come.
2:46 am. I was wide awake. In concession, I pulled back the covers and stepped into my slippers, pulling my robe around me as I walked to the window. My spirit was restless. Something was about to happen. I could sense it in the silence.
I lifted the blind and peered out onto the dark street, lit only with porch lights from homes that had remembered to turn them on to detract crime, which seemed to happen more often. My gaze drifted to the sky. The stars shone more brightly than I had ever remembered seeing them in the city. They seemed to twinkle with excitement.
On a whim, I gathered my sleeping children around me and my husband in our bed. I left the shade open and looked out into the night sky, waiting. Hoping. Dreaming that this ordinary December morning might be the day of all days. Faith becoming sight in the form of the one I had loved for a lifetime yet not seen. Yet. The darker the world became, the more I longed for him. The more I looked for him. “Be alert.” Was his admonition. “Watch. I am coming soon!”
So I watched. And just as my eyes began to close again in sleepiness, a sound crashed through the darkness and caused me to sit up straight and look. A shout. A gleeful, excited, powerful and beautiful voice called, the sound so loud and so completely evident that surely there wasn’t a soul on the planet that hadn’t heard it. My husband and children were jolted awake, and I smiled knowingly at my husband.
“It’s time?” he laughed groggily. “Can it be?”
“Jesus!” my oldest child pointed out the window. “I hear trumpets!”
We all ran downstairs and threw open the front door. I ran to the hutch to pull out my letters that I had kept there, ready at a moment’s notice. I put them on the table in full view of the door and followed my family out into the driveway. As we looked up, thousands of shouts and laughter filled the sky as the first glimpse of a somehow familiar face came closer. His beautiful, friendly eyes were smiling as he held out his nail-scarred hands to those that happily waited. My own family was dancing around us in complete elation. I noticed sadly that many houses along our street remained dark. It was as if they could not hear a thing.
A moment later we were sailing through the air at what must have been light speed. And then we were with him. No more pain. No more struggle. No more. Now, there was only Jesus. Only and forever our Savior, who had come while the world was sleeping.
And the morning dawn found them in a fog of disaster and panic. We saw, from afar, nestled safely in the embrace of the Savior, who had rescued us from the immense trouble brewing just on the horizon. He had not forgotten us. We prayed for those loved ones we had left behind, that when Jesus returned for the third time, they would not be found sleeping anymore.
