Jesus, our brother, strong and good / was humbly born in a stable rude
and the friendly beasts around him stood. / Jesus our brother, strong and good.
“I,” said the donkey, shaggy and brown, / “I carried his mother uphill and down,
I carried his mother to Bethlehem town. / I,” said the donkey, shaggy and brown.
And I did, you know. Now being a donkey, I’m not good with maps and figuring miles, and I sure didn’t count my steps. But I can tell you that it was a long journey. Mary didn’t complain, but she was, oh, so tired by the time we finally arrived. We weren’t alone, there were other people making the same trip, so we had plenty of company.
This was my first trip outside of Nazareth, so everything was new to me. One of the older donkeys told me that it wasn’t safe to travel alone. Robbers and bandits waited for people and their animals traveling by themselves. Then he laughed at me when I started looking left and right behind every rock and tree.
I don’t know how much you folks know about this country, but there are lots of hills. That “uphill and down” that you sang in the song? That’s the way it is. And Mary’s nice, very nice, but after a while … . As I said, she wasn’t the only one who was really tired when we made it to Bethlehem.
It was good to have all those people traveling with us, good for safety. But we were traveling slowly. Poor Joseph. He’d have made it a lot faster, but my tired little legs carrying tired Mary, we just weren’t making very good time. We were the last ones into the town.
Now Bethlehem wasn’t exactly a city with a motel on every corner. Of course, in those days, they didn’t have motels. Anyway, there wasn’t any room for us. Finally someone took pity on us and let the people with me stay with them in their one-room house.1 But it was warm and dry, and Mary was having birth pains, so nobody complained.
# # #
“I,” said the cow, all white and red, / “I gave him my manger for his bed.
I gave him hay to pillow his head. / I,” said the cow, all white and red.
OK, I’m only a cow, but I’ve had calves, and I’ve seen other calves being born. This woman came in with the little donkey. I told Sheep, “She’s going to calve pretty soon. She doesn’t have much time.” I moved out of my stall, which was nicely bedded down with straw, so she could have a nice clean place. Apparently this was her first calf. Oh, I’m sorry, you people don’t call your offspring “calves.” You call them “babies.” Anyway, apparently this was her first baby because it took her a while, but then, finally, the little boy arrived.
For a baby, he was a fine one. Not very big if he’d been a calf, but your babies are smaller than ours when they’re born. They wrapped him in bands of cloth, to protect him, I guess. Nobody ever wrapped up my calves when they were born, and they all turned out fine. But apparently human babies are different. For that matter, humans wrap themselves up in cloth all the time, so I guess it makes sense that they would wrap up a baby.
Then they put him in my manger, with some nice soft hay to make it softer. Like I said, he was a fine baby. A little small … Oh, I already said that. The woman was really tired after that, but you could tell that she was also very proud. And the man was pleased. He had a big smile on his face.
“I’m so glad we made it in time,” he said.
“I didn’t thing we would. I thought I was going to have the baby right there on the donkey.” But she laughed, so I don’t think she really meant it.
Just as things were settling down, we heard a noise outside. The door swung open, and some men came in. I knew right away that these were not townsfolk. They smelled like sheep and campfires.
They told an amazing story. They’d been sitting around their fire, keeping warm. Every now and again someone would go out and check on the sheep and then come back. Some of them were dozing, and others were just staring into the fire the way humans sometimes do.
Suddenly a bright light appeared in the sky. To quote your King James Bible, they were “sore afraid!” Terrified! It couldn’t be the sun, because it was night. It wasn’t the moon, because the moon was hanging off in the east. This light appeared in the south.
And then, to make matters worse, the bright light spoke! “Do not be afraid.”
Right! Talking lights that make it appear like daytime? “Do not be afraid?”
And the light said, “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.” And the light said that this baby would be found wrapped in cloth … and lying in a manger.
In a manger? My manger! I gave THIS baby MY manger for his bed! Wow!
# # #
“I,” said the sheep with curly horn, / “I gave him my wool for his blanket warm.
He wore my coat on Christmas morn. / I,” said the sheep with curly horn.
Cow seemed to be so impressed with it being HER manger, that she has lost her voice. So I’ll tell you the rest of the story the shepherds told.
Suddenly (lots of “suddenly’s” in this story), the light angel was joined by a whole chorus of angels, a multitude of them. “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
And these shepherds, God’s favor rested on them, because God sent the angels to them.
So the shepherds came, and they found this place, and they found the baby, the human baby, in Cow’s manger. They told the man and the woman what they had seen. The man thanked them, but the woman just listened quietly and smiled. Then the men left, and it was quiet again.
Like Cow said, they had wrapped the baby in cloths, but he didn’t have any fur or wool on him at all. So I worried that he might get cold. I saw the blanket that our woman had made last year from my wool. Sometimes it was chilly, and she would wrap herself up in it. I knew it warmed her, so I grabbed it with my teeth and took it over to the baby’s mother. She smiled, stroked my face, and said, “Thank you.” Then she put it over her baby. I’m not sure, but I think he smiled. Anyway, it was a blanket made of my wool, and I gave him a blanket to keep him warm.
# # #
“I,” said the dove, from the rafters high. / “I cooed him to sleep that he should not cry.
We cooed him to sleep, / my mate and I. / I,” said the dove from the rafters high.
The others have already told the story, so there isn’t much more to tell. It didn’t take the donkey long to fall asleep. The woman stretched out in the upper level, and she was quickly asleep as well.
Cow and Sheep were too excited to sleep, but they waited quietly nearby, so as not to disturb the sleeping ones. The man waited nearby, awake, but weary. And the baby was still awake. My mate and I, we flew over so we were just above him. Then we began to coo softly together, with his tenor and my soprano, we cooed him a lullaby. Not the one where the baby falls out of the treetop because that would be too frightening. Instead, we made up our own and cooed it to him. Soon he began to relax, and then he, too, fell asleep.
Cow, Sheep, the man, and we two doves kept watch.
# # #
“I,” said the camel, all yellow and black. / “Over the desert upon my back,
I brought him a gift in the wise men’s pack. / I,” said the camel, all yellow and black.
My story comes later, because we didn’t arrive that very night. But we did come, the magi following the star, each on his camel.
When Gaspar saw the special star in the sky, he immediately told his friends. The next day Melchior and Balthazar joined him, and we headed west. We traveled at night, because, like Melchior said, you can’t see the stars in the daytime. Fortunately, most of the time we had enough moonlight. It would have been bad if it had been a time when the night light was only a sliver!
It took us several nights, but when we neared the big city, they traveled in the daytime.
“The king will be born in the capital, in the city,” they said. They went into the palace, but came out looking puzzled.
“Bethlehem? That’s just a little town. It’s not important.”
“Why would the king of the Jews be born in such a place?”
“I don’t know, but that’s what Herod’s advisors told him.”
“Maybe we better wait until nightfall and see what the star says.”
So we didn’t set out right away, but once the stars appeared, we were back on track. And finally,
“There it is. The star stopped right over that house.”
You don’t want to jump off a camel like you would a horse, so they made us lie down so they could get off. They started running into the house, then turned and came back. Rummaging through our saddlebags, they found what they had brought and went back into the house. We couldn’t go into the house, so we looked in through the window.
The man and the woman stared at the magi as they gazed at the baby. When they had heard our story, they smiled. The man took the gifts and thanked our men.
We camped just outside of town the rest of the night. Near morning, Balthazar told the others, “I just had a dream. We are not to return to Herod. We are to go home another way.”
So we did. We went home by another way, and we were never quite the same afterwards.
Thus all the beasts, by some good spell, / in the stable dark were glad to tell
of the gifts they gave Emmanuel, / the gifts they gave Emmanuel.
- Common people lived in one-room houses with a lower level for the animals. People slept in blankets on the floor in the same room. A manger taken from the lower level would protect the baby from being stepped on by people in the upper level. Bailey, Kenneth E.. Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes (pp. 35-36). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
