Garden Canopy

'Before His Manger,' Chapter 53, part 1: The Manger

25.12.09

In Chapter 52 , Joseph and Mary made their way south toward Bethlehem, but not with their original traveling companions -- who included their unpleasant neighbor, Ehud. Instead of the traditional route through the Jordan River Valley, which was longer and hotter, they chose to go through Samaria, in company with a Samarian Jew named Setti. As they approached Jerusalem, they could see the temple. Mary was determined to stop there, even though her strength was beginning to wane. In Chapter 53, they arrive at Bethlehem, and the one so long-awaited is born at last. Our story will conclude as we join other worshippers and witnesses before his manger.

Chapter 53: The Manger

With the fatigue of a week's travel wearing upon Mary's body and mind, Joseph was anxious to get her to a comfortable inn at Bethlehem. But Mary wanted more than a brief visit to the temple. They had arrived just before noon, and now, an hour later, there was more she urgently desired to do.

When Joseph noticed her walking unsteadily, he persuaded her to sit down in the Court of the Gentiles. It seemed to him that she was a bit pale and that her eyelids were drooping a little. And when she momentarily adjusted her head cover, Joseph noticed her hand had a slight tremble to it.

She looked up with a weak smile and said: "Joseph, I know we must not take risks. But we must do this." She took a moment to scan the great square that surrounded the inner courts of the temple. She studied the throngs of loud, excited people. Most of those who had just entered the area walked, not with their eyes upon the stone floor, nor even upon the people around them, but upon the majestic building that Jews considered to be the center of the world. She turned again to her husband. "All is well, Joseph," she said. "I will be stronger after I rest a bit."

"Then rest," he said, "and we will finish our visit to this holy place." He placed a hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes. "And let us remember that we still have five miles to go before the day is spent."

Several minutes passed as Mary closed her eyes and tried to rest. While she did so, Joseph took time to watch the swelling Passover crowds. Many men dressed in white robes could be seen quickly pressing their way through the mass of visitors. Some of these, having just arrived, were hurrying to report to their priesthood supervisors and to be checked for ceremonial readiness before beginning their duties. Others, having just completed their shifts, were hurrying to some place of residence that they might eat and rest before returning. So it would be, night and day, during the Passover week. As many as 7,000 of them would be officiating at one time during the busiest hours.

Joseph's eyes looked up to the Mount of Olives on the east. It stood higher than the Temple Mount. Pilgrims topping that mountain from its east slope would suddenly find themselves looking down upon this scene, with the vast numbers of fellow Jews from places near and far, drawn to the massive and breath-taking building, with its snowy-white marble walls and gilded battlements around the top gleaming in the sun. He could discern those crowds on the Mount of Olives, stopping to take in this sight, frozen in wonder, and then streaming down its western slope to find their way onto the temple grounds.

His attention was drawn again to those around him, especially the ordinance workers. By and large, they beheld the sacred rites of the temple without understanding the meaning God had planted there. He felt again, as he often had before, a gratitude for his father, Jacob, and their friend, Rabbi Shayah. These were in the small minority of Jews who really wished to see the quiet, sobering truths revealed in the Law of Moses and its ceremonies. Of course, it all pointed to the great Friend of Israel and of mankind, the Messiah. If they studied and lived the Law as God intended, it would prepare them for his personal presence.

And now, whether these thousands of officiators and hundreds of thousands of practicing Jews were ready, their Messiah was about to arrive. Joseph marveled that he and his havruta -- his fellow student of the things of God, his Mary -- were apprised of these things while so many others had little idea that such a moment was at hand.

Now Joseph heard two statements, one right after the other.

The first came from Mary, who announced: "I am ready. I must see the great altar, and a sacrifice." Joseph turned to see how she was doing. She was standing there, looking much revived. It occurred to Joseph that God was blessing her to get more out of a little rest than was naturally possible.

Then came another voice, from just behind them, "I think we can arrange that."

They turned and found standing before them a tall and impressive elderly man, who himself was wearing the priestly robes. To Joseph, the man did not seem much like the many others, distracted and uncommunicative, rushing along with their schedules, busy and wrapped up in the demands and importance of their offices. This man seemed to be focused upon Joseph and Mary as if they were the only ones in sight. He seemed to be a peaceful island in the swirl of humanity.

Joseph was just about to ask what he had meant by those words, when Mary stepped forward and embraced him. "Zacharias," she said, weeping softly.

Zacharias patted her shoulder and looked upon Joseph with a wide smile. At length Mary stepped back and stood next to her husband. "Zacharias," she said, beaming, "this is Joseph, my blessed husband. And Joseph, this is God's high priest, the father of him who will be a voice in the wilderness, a voice..." she said with trembling lip, pausing to get control of her words, "a voice to introduce the Chosen One to the chosen people."

The two men nodded with mutual respect, each one aware of the remarkable role the other had in the historic drama God was unfolding for mankind.

And so Zacharias took them to the Court of the Women, where they could view the great altar. He took Joseph to the Court of the Men of Israel for another, closer look. They saw the repeated process of family representatives coming to the officiators with sacrificial animals that had been carefully examined and found to be perfect members of their kind. After a priest had used an ordinance to set the animal apart as a proxy for the family or individual, it was killed with humane quickness and its blood taken to the altar.

The two men found Mary waiting for them. She was sitting on a little stone bench in a less-trafficked corner of the Court of the Women. Once again, there were tears upon her cheeks.

At the sight of her, Joseph and Zacharias knew there was significance to this moment. Zacharias, for one, realized that there was one being symbolized by all those blood sacrifices. And here sat the mother of that one. In his mind, he ventured a guess that the mind of this remarkable girl, expecting any day now the arrival of her firstborn, was coming to terms with the solemn future.

As she spoke to them, with a distant look in those teary eyes, Zacharias found that his guess was right.

"Joseph," she began, "do you remember Tova's story about Eve -- telling Abel the meaning of the sacrifices?"

"Yes," he said. "I cannot forget it. The sacrifices are a similitude of a great sacrifice to be performed someday..." He paused, his mind suddenly leaping forward to thoughts he had never had.

"Yes, Joseph," she said. Now she was weeping again, unable to speak.

Ever so softly, while he himself wept, Joseph whispered, "The sacrifice of ... the Only Begotten!" He turned now to Zacharias, and uttered other phrases from the words of the prophets and the teachings of Rabbi Shayah. With each utterance, Zacharias only nodded as if he himself had already had the sort of learning experience Joseph was now having. "Payment for sin ... a great and last sacrifice ... an infinite sacrifice ... one from outside our system ... to save us ... a special birth ... a special kind of life ... a special kind of death."

As Mary listened to Joseph, her hands were upon her tummy, her eyes were fixed downward, and the tears ran freely to her chin, dripping onto her dress. She did not really see the gleaming, polished floor before her. She only envisioned, with reluctance, her beloved child, someday an adult, someday near this place, someday being the great offering.

"Every sacrifice," Zacharias said, "not only the kind we offer here, but every effort to do the will of God, all of them are a reminder of the one great sacrifice."

Joseph was nodding as the new and terrible truth became a little clearer to him. The chosen would not only make the sacrifice. He would be the sacrifice.

"If he is to be the sacrifice..."

"...the Lamb," Mary quietly added.

"If he is to be the Lamb," Joseph continued, "then who...?

"You mean, who is the offerer?" Zacharias said. "You are wondering, whose Lamb will he be?"

Zacharias paused, looking at them, and added, "I think you know who will offer him."

Mary still had her eyes upon the floor before her. Her head came up slowly and she said, "Who else? Who else has authority to offer the Son, but the Father?"

"It will be the real payment for our debts," Zacharias added. He pointed in the direction of the great altar. "That, over there, pays no debt. It only points our minds to the one great payment..."

Then Mary looked up and with renewed courage, submitting to what she had not seen before. She said what Zacharias had taken care not to say: "He will be God's perfect offering ... the Lamb of God."

In the silence that came, Joseph wondered how one raises a son to do such a thing, to be such a thing. Before, he had pondered much about how to raise up God's king. Now he pondered how to raise up God's Lamb.

Mary stood up. She had seen, with her eyes and with her whole soul, what she had come to see.

She looked no longer to the altar. It would go on for some few years, being what altars had been for centuries -- God's reminder to a forgetful people. And then her son would come to this place. He would fulfill. He would do his perfect work.

But now she must do her work. It awaited her in Bethlehem of Judea, five miles south.

"We are blessed," she said, "that you, dear Zacharias, have hosted us this day. May the Mighty One be praised. By wisdom and power, his wondrous purpose will come to pass." She looked at her husband's face, reached up and wiped away the moisture that had collected under his eyes.

"Let us being going," she said.

Several stops and four slow miles later, with the center of little Bethlehem only a mile away, Mary again needed some time on solid ground, relieved of the rocking and jolting of Yetsiv's spine.

On both sides of the road were groves of olive trees. They chanced to stop near a small stone structure that was partly hidden among the trees, where a family of Jewish pilgrims had just been visiting and were now leaving. Joseph helped Mary over to a side of this ancient building. She sat on the ground and with relief leaned back against the wall. Suddenly they realized what this place was. It was the tomb of Rachel.

Mary closed her eyes and thought about that noble grandmother of 1,800 years before: the miraculous conception that enabled a chosen son, Joseph, to be born; the added blessing that came when she found herself with child again; then here, while just entering Bethlehem, that child was born; and here, giving birth to this son, she died.

In her dying breath, Rachel called his name Benoni, "child of my sorrow." Her husband Jacob would later use another name -- Benjamin -- "son of rejoicing."

With these thoughts in her weary mind, Mary fell asleep.


Joseph smiled at the irony of seeing Mary rest at last, but a full mile from the place where he wanted her to be.

The irony was short lived, and replaced by another. After only a short time, she awoke in a state of agitation. There was a look of terror in her eyes he had never seen before.

He dropped to her side, held her tightly and said, "Everything is fine, my havruta."

"I saw Rachel, right here," she said, her voice trembling. "Oh, Joseph! She was so beautiful, so steady and full of faith. She knew she would die. She was in great pain..."

Mary could not speak further for a minute. "But, her distress was not only the pain, Joseph. It was that she could not raise this son."

Mary paused yet again to get control, and continued, "She could not even hold him! Oh, Joseph, I saw her. I saw her die ... it was right here!"

Joseph wondered what ever made him think this was a good place for Mary to rest. "You are back here, now," he said, hoping to help her escape the vivid world of her dream. "You can be calm," he added.

But to these attempts at comfort she seemed to pay no attention. She knew that a frequent cause of death among women of her day was giving birth. Thinking back, she could not remember the angel declaring that she would live beyond the birth.

So she cradled Joseph's face in her hands and looked into his eyes with fiery firmness. "Joseph," she said, "you must hear me. If I, like Rachel, do not survive..."

"Mary..."

"Please, Joseph, listen. If I die, you must..."

"I know," he said, "I understand. Do not worry."

She seemed satisfied now. Her offering was on the altar. She was settled, as ancient Rachel had been. God could take up her sacrifice if it was needed.

Many minutes passed as the emotion of her consecration seeped down to stay in the fixed places of her soul. Once again Joseph had been blessed above measure: he had seen into the heart of one who was giving her all to the journey of motherhood.

Only for a short distance was Mary able to walk. She then had to ride on the faithful one, Yetsiv. As Joseph lifted her onto the animal, he was grateful to think that they would soon find an inn where she could rest and recover before the birth.

But along the way, they had to slow down, for Mary was having dizzy spells. Joseph walked alongside to steady her and hold her upright. Yetsiv walked slower now, and with a more careful gate, working hard not to jostle his delicate cargo.

After a time Mary asked in a faint tone, "How far to Bethlehem?"

With a gentle enthusiasm, Joseph answered, "Less than a mile."

She recalled visiting the sick, and knew what she needed. "Joseph," she said, "this would be a good time ... to just talk to me ... help me think about something new."

"All right..." he said. His mind quickly reached for something to say, while he kept a firm hand behind her back and kept an eye on Yetsiv's pace.

"Let me tell you of my trade. That's something a wife should know."

"And a son should know," she added.

The sun was just going down. Joseph looked at Mary and found that though her eyes were closed and her head bobbed passively with Yetsiv's gait, yet she was smiling with that last comment.

Joseph was suddenly both subdued and thrilled with the strange thought that raising God's son -- who had commanded the forces of nature and formed the dwelling place of the human race -- might entail helping him to use the humble tools of a stone mason to form homes and other buildings where people would be sheltered from those same forces.

Thus was Joseph filled with a host of new hopes and concerns as he began, "It may sound strange, but the most important tools are the delicate-looking reeds you have seen on my cart..."

"To measure..." she said.

"Right. With wood it is important, but with stone it is crucial, to never guess at a measurement."

"Go on, carpenter," she said.

"Sometimes, for an arch or long wall, we must make an extra long measuring reed on location. This can delay the work just to do that one thing, but it would be even worse to begin without measuring."

He looked at Mary and saw that the faint smile was still there, her eyes still closed.

"Something else you might not think of is the plumb line. Some use a stone on the end of the string. I have a lead weight with a sharp tip that points straight down when it's hanging. The lead weight is the same thickness as the wooden handle at the top. We use it..."

"To make sure the walls are straight..."

"You're right, my havruta. You would make a very good builder."

He told her also about the long mason's line, that is stretched the length of a wall so that the stones are never laid "hard" -- being out too far -- or "slack" -- being in too far. He described his hammers of different weights, some with toothed edges, and the even greater variety of chisels.

Some of his chisels and hammers -- his favorites -- were heirlooms made in Egypt and passed down from three or four generations back. There were copper ones for decorating and working the softest limestone, and iron ones for the tougher jobs. Even tools made of hard granite.

He told how a mason could follow the grain, chiseling a groove around a large block, going deeper and deeper until it was possible to crack it free with a lever, leaving a "stump." He told of wooden mallets for cutting fine lines, and "chicken legs" for more finely shaping and texturing the surfaces.

There were also the hoisting ropes and pulleys, and the leather-lined baskets for carrying these things. And the constant need to keep the tools clean, to rub wood and metal parts with oil, and to keep all these valuables covered with oiled cloth to protect them from moisture. And the constant problem of securing them from thieves, day and night.

As they came into Bethlehem, there was just enough light to point out the different colors, textures, degrees of hardness and grain visible in rocky outcroppings on the hillsides. Joseph could not help but think that he may be using some of this very material to earn a living in this place before long.

But now, growing foremost in his mind, was the immediate task of finding a place to give the weakened girl at his side a place of comfort, quiet and privacy.

Privacy. How essential that suddenly seemed! He thought of his experience with caravan stops -- the large unpartitioned "inns" where a number of groups would be jammed together, camping within a common wall, sometimes under a common roof or awning. It is true that such places were supplied with food and water for humans and animals, and were somewhat safe from evil doers. But there was anything but privacy in those places when they were full.

And, anything but quiet.

It was with this worry that Joseph spotted Bethlehem's largest inn. It was straight ahead, across the road from the synagogue, bordering on the large open area known as "Synagogue Square."

A din of sounds poured over the caravansary walls and flooded the square. Yetsiv's ears twitched forward and his eyes widened a little with the braying of donkeys and camels. There was also the shrill words of mothers keeping their children close and the shouts of men directing their sons in setting up tents, going for water, or tethering an animal that wanted to challenge another animal in some nearby adjoining stall.

Jewish custom required those who were so blessed as to dwell at Jerusalem, including her surrounding hills, to open their homes to visitors during the holy times. But these homes were filled early. The only alternative for the pilgrim with limited money -- besides simply camping on some open hillside -- was such a place as this.

Joseph brought Yetsiv to a stop outside the wall and lifted Mary to the ground. She held as tightly as she could to his arm for support, casting her dim eyes about for somewhere to sit.

"Anywhere," she said simply.

He helped her to a place along the wall where he could keep her in view as he went to the entrance, and where she could also be near the comforting presence of Yetsiv.

The entrance was a towering, wide opening that could accommodate even the largest camels, laden with riders or cargo. He felt dwarfed as he approached it, as the full force of the odors, clamor and chaos within the courtyard rushed upon him, and as he considered the unspeakably important role he must fill. In his heart he turned to that God who is a faithful friend to those who are faithful to him. He looked back at Mary. In her face he feared to find an expression of pain or worry, in her eyes a desperate pleading. But there, instead, he found courage and reassurance that all would be well. He knew that his prayer was joined by hers. And he knew of her settled faith in the all-powerful one whose child she carried.

The operator of this inn was not hard to spot. He was very much in charge of his little kingdom. It seemed that this man wished to be louder than the great camels that were grunting and roaring at each other across the yard.

Joseph could see that the man was asking people to buy the wine he sold to these thirsty and captive customers. "Safer for you than the local water," he was shouting, "and just old enough to give you a very pleasant sleep tonight!"

"Pleasant indeed," Joseph said to himself, and realized that here was yet another distasteful problem: strangers not only close, loud and intrusive, but drunken as well.

Joseph scanned the perimeter of the area. Not only were all the stalls full, but some were two-deep in pilgrim groups. People were milling about, mingling with their new neighbors, gossiping, bartering, laughing, arguing.

He searched again, hoping against hope that he might discover some place of respite, shielded from all this tumult. But all he could find was even more of these conditions than he had seen on first glance. He saw no point in staying. He must check the other places in town. Perhaps the smaller ones had more room, though this didn't seem likely.

"Young man!" came the proprietor's voice from behind him. Joseph was willing to speak with the man, but wanted first to check on Mary. So he made his way back to the entrance, saw her there, her head bowed in fatigue, and turned to encounter the man.

"Young man, if you seek a place to stay, this is your best choice, I assure you."

"Perhaps one of the other inns..." Joseph began.

"I own all the inns in this town!" he shouted. "They are full, I tell you. Even the open areas in the center are crowded with tents at my other locations." He reached up to Joseph's collar and gently tugged him back inside a few steps. Then he turned and pointed to the center of the courtyard.

"By morning, it will be even more crowded here," he continued. "So I'll tell you what. Just for you..." the man said with a smile that displayed many of his pointed teeth, "just for you, I will make a spot right in the middle! You will be close to the water and the food, everything for your convenience tonight!"

Joseph turned directly toward the man and looked into his busy little eyes until they were steady and attentive. "Sir, I have a wife with me, expecting a child any time now. She is weak and ill. She needs a place, a different sort of place, more private than this."

The man looked down for a moment, thinking hard, perhaps wondering how he might somehow turn this situation into a profitable one. Evidently, none occurred to him, for he looked up with an impatient expression and said, "You are crazy, and if you don't stay here you will be a bad husband indeed, for your poor wife will be upon some dark stony pathway giving birth. Is that what you want?"

Joseph did not answer, but only looked around again, confirming his former sense that this was indeed not the place where the Holy One of Israel should be born.

At the two other caravanserai, it was just as the man had said. Even the center of the courtyard was crowded with tents, bedding, people and animals. And the light of dusk was nearly gone. Joseph stood at a smaller opening, this one belonging to a very limited facility that might hold five or six parties at most. Because of their smaller numbers, it was not so loud inside. Perhaps, Joseph thought, I should be willing to make our place here.

He scanned the stalls. None of them were empty of course, but one of them did have only one occupant, drinking freely of the wine that the owner had no doubt just sold to him. "Perhaps that man could be persuaded..." Joseph began to reason. He looked more closely, and was suddenly filled with alarm.

Instinctively, he moved back out of the entrance. He glanced at Mary, who was again resting as best she could, at a place along the outside wall. "Ehud," he whispered to himself. "Of course he is here in town. That inn is the one place, most of all, that is out of the question."

Joseph stood near Mary, unwilling to waken her as in his heart he once again pled for guidance. He reviewed each of the places he had seen that night. No, the voice that guides us into right decisions would lend its approval for any of them. He knew in his mind that at times like this, God always had a wise plan, and would eventually intervene. It seemed that even God would not wait any longer than this to act upon that plan. "In the name of Messiah, O Father," he prayed yet again, "bless thy servant to know thy will."

"Young man!" Joseph knew that voice. It was the owner of these inns, making the rounds again. Joseph turned to him as patiently and kindly as he knew how.

"Yes?"

"You still have not decided?"

"No."

"This," the man said in a quiet voice, pointing at Mary, "is your wife?"

"Yes."

The man seemed to be thinking hard once again. "I know a place on the bluff on the east of town, overlooking the fields. I've been thinking ... it is one of the remaining properties of King David, still in the hands of his heirs." The man smiled big again. "You could get some privacy there, maybe a little shelter."

Joseph was suddenly paying close attention.

"I will make you an offer," the man continued. "For a small fee, I could find this family -- they are in town somewhere I am sure, to register the property in the census. They might give you permission..."

"Tell me sir," Joseph said with some urgency, "how to find this property you speak of."

Seeing Joseph's curiosity, the man showed him how to reach the eastern bluff of Bethlehem, and where to find the winding path that descended its face.

"As I said, there are shelters there, some of them going back to the time of David himself!" the man declared, knowing that he was closing in on a customer.

Joseph reached into a little bag at his waist and brought out a coin. "Thank you for the information," he said. "I can act on it myself now."

"But you don't understand, young man," came the objection. "You will need permission from the owner. I am willing to go find him..."

Joseph offered a prayer of thanksgiving in his heart as he stepped over to where Mary rested. Before waking her and taking her to find the shelter on Bethlehem's eastern bluff, he turned to the inn keeper and said with a smile, "You have already found the owner, sir. So, once again, I thank you."


Setti was a Samarian, for his roots were in Samaria and that is where he lived. But he was not a Samaritan, for he was not of the dominant religion there. His deceased parents, Muset and Giddai, had been converts to Judaism. Setti continued in their faith steadfastly.

Setti was acquainted with most other Samarian Jews, and among these were the shepherds whose camp he and Joseph and Mary had shared during the last nights of their journey to Behtlehem.

While these sheep-herding people -- the Samaritans of mixed descent -- were tolerated in Jewish neighborhoods, they often felt unwelcoming gazes there. So when in the area of Jerusalem for holy times, they stayed with the shepherds who dwelt upon the hills east of Bethlehem.

Thus it was that among the Jewish shepherds, who were keeping a constant watch over the female sheep about to give birth at lambing season, Setti and his friends had pitched their tents. They had arrived there earlier in the day. The women and children were settled in their tents, for it was the eve of a Sabbath. The men were outside, becoming acquainted with each other and preparing to take shifts during this night, as they would for many nights to come, seeing to it that no young animal came into the world without assistance.

Meanwhile, Joseph, Mary and Yetsiv were that very night making their way, by lamp light, down the steep, twisting path on Bethlehem's eastern bluff.

The birth was still three days away.

One of the Samarian boys slept in the same tent that night with a new friend, a shepherd named Samuel. This Samuel was of the long lineage of shepherds descending from Nathan, a son of David. They were known as the shepherds of Israel, in contrast to the kings of Israel who descended from another son of David, Solomon.

It was of this shepherd line that Mary also came.

It the shadowy interior of the large camel-hair tent, lighted by only one small lamp that hung from the main pole -- the center stake that supported the middle -- Samuel was binding the ends of long ribbons so that they would not unravel at the ends where a knife had been used to cut them into lengths. He was using a thick needle made of camel bone and a course, fuzzy thread of wool.

The Samarian boy, whose name was Nahbi, could just barely see the color of the ribbons. They were red, not a color to be used for common or trivial purposes. "Someone has dyed the ribbons red," he said quietly, hoping not to disturb the youngest children who were falling asleep in bedding nearby. "Why red?" he asked.

Samuel kept his eye on his work, and did not look up as he answered. "They are for the first born."

"Oh," said Nahbi, "you mark the ones who will die in the temple."

"Yes," Samuel said, nodding a little but still focused on the tiny stitches he was making, "the sacrifices."

"The red is for blood?" Nahbi guessed.

"I suppose so."

Nahbi had another question. "But," he began, his brow furrowed, "how do you know which was born first?"

"That is why we are there with them at birth..."

"Not just to help the ewe?" Nahbi interjected.

"That too, but also to keep a record of the first born, and to put these ribbons around their necks."

"So that's why the temple leaders won't buy our sheep for the sacrifices," said Nahbi, "because they do not have the ribbons."

Samuel looked up now, not wanting to hurt Nahbi's feelings, of course -- not wanting to imply that there was anything bad about other shepherds. And yet he was proud of these trusted ones of David's line, the ones trusted to breed and rear the animals to be used at God's house.

"We are considered witnesses," Samuel said solemnly. "My fathers before me have been known to be perfectly honest. They were trusted never to deceive, always to testify in truth. That is how I shall be also, when I am a man."

Nahbi nodded. Now he understood why the shepherd clan that used the wide pastures south of Jerusalem and east of Bethlehem were considered different from all others. He was glad to know that these families -- neither rich or learned, but well-acquainted with the words of God and strictly honest in all these -- were trusted even by the wily and sophisticated leaders in Jerusalem.

It was always good to know that someone could be trusted.


Joseph and Mary found several places on the eastern bluff, cavities in the hillside that had been deepened by the hammers and chisels of men down through the centuries. This rough mountain side was the only property the family had not sold over the years. Joseph's father, Jacob, had described it several times, but there had never been occasion for Joseph to visit it until now.

It had not been easy in the dark to size up the various caves, in order to determine which was most suitable. That is, not until they got to the lowest one on the bluff. Joseph was at first skeptical because its entrance was so large, admitting more of the chili air. But instead of being one room, it was a string of rooms tunneled into the solid rock on a curved pattern, so that air and light were more and more diminished as one entered further and further into the hill.

There were some few animals in the first chamber. It would have been easy to look no further, but Joseph and Mary had to be thorough. They soon found that by passing over a couple of low barriers, they could reach the deep-most chamber where neither the scent nor litter of livestock was found. While Mary slept, Joseph moved various old implements stored there into another area, cleaned the surfaces, set up two other lamps and brought in some fresh hay he found in a bin.

Mary awoke after Joseph had been working for some three hours. "Have I gone to heaven?" she asked with a smile.

Joseph came to her side and by the light of a lamp which he held, he saw the cheer in her expression. "No," Joseph answered, "not exactly. But it is heaven enough for me to hear the strength in your voice and to see you looking better."

"It is heaven enough for me, too," she said. "Where, in all the world, could we find a better place?"

"I can think of a few in all the world," he said, almost laughing, "but none that I know of in Bethlehem."

Sometimes we have an urgent problem that cannot be fixed. Joseph had learned that when this happens, it is best to pick another problem and go to work on it instead. When he awoke on Sunday morning he still was not sure how to replenish their dwindling supply of food. No doubt, whoever owned the animals kept in the outside chamber of the grotto would soon be tending to them. When that happened, Joseph could look into some way of purchasing food. But until then, while Mary still rested, there was something else he could do.

On the previous day, she had asked what sort of bed they could make ready for the child. Joseph had found a solution.

Among the tools and implements stored in the cavern, there was an old hammer and two chisels. At first he thought of hollowing out a place on the floor of the chamber they had claimed as their bedroom. But far better would be something that could be moved. There was more than one old stone basin in these chambers, mangers that had held water, grain or fodder for the animals that occupied this cavern-stable, perhaps for centuries.

So, Joseph lugged one of these old mangers into the outside chamber. With the light of morning on his work -- and the curious eyes of Yetsiv and a milk cow, two sheep, a hen and her chicks to watch him -- he began a special cleaning project. He would re-dress the stone, shaping it to its new purpose, making the cupped area wider, smoothing the ragged places and, as if removing the shell from a cooked egg, chipping away a layer of oldness, making it new, fresh and clean.

Now and then, he checked on Mary. She even left her deep straw bed and came out to watch him a while at midday, but as the sun was hidden behind a stern vault of chalky-grey clouds overhead, and a stiff, cool wind was blowing across the bluff, he thought it best to escort her to the inner chamber again. He urged her to eat the last of the bread and cheese and they agreed that she should return to her warm bed.

Then he returned to the front chamber to continue shaping the little stone bed. His back faced the cave opening, with the muted, overcast sky shining upon the stone. So he did not at first see the arrival of a man behind him. He did see the soft shadow fall across his work, and at the same time heard the words, "Who are you?"

Read "Before His Manger," Chapter 53, part 2

Source: Mormon Times