Children of Bethlehem - The Innkeeper's Daughter

CHILDREN OF BETHLEHEM

THE INNKEEPER’S DAUGHTER

By Robert Allen

“So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.”  Luke 2:2

A monolog for a teen-age girl.

I love my parents, I really do.  But tonight I am truly upset with them.  I just cannot believe what they did.  Oh, I can understand why they did it, I just can’t understand why they didn’t do something to correct their mistake when they discovered the truth.

What did they do?  They missed the chance of a lifetime, that’s what they did.  Our inn could have been the birthplace of a king.  And instead, my father sent him out behind the house to be born in a stable.  And that’s not all.  Even after the shepherds came and told us about the angels and their announcement that this baby was the Savior, the promised Messiah—they still couldn’t find a place for him and his parents here in our inn.  They left them right out there with the cows and donkeys and sheep.  Them and their baby.

All of my life I have been told that living in Bethlehem was something special.  Father loves to talk about being from the city of David.  Our greatest king, perhaps the greatest king who ever lived, was born right here in our city.  His tomb is still here, just a quarter mile down the street from where we live.  Every child in every family in the entire city knows about David and Goliath, David and his harp, David and Jonathan.  We can quote all of the prophecies concerning God’s promise that David would have an eternal kingdom.  Why?  Because we live in Bethlehem.  If another ruler comes to take the place of King David he will come from right here in our town.  That’s what the prophet Micah said hundreds of years ago.

My own father is the one who taught me that prophecy.  “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” (Micah 5:2).  My own mother is the one who reminded me all through childhood, “if the king is to be born in Bethlehem he will have to be born to a daughter of Bethlehem.”  Every girl in town secretly harbors the hope that she might one day be the mother of another king.  A king like David.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s why my parents won’t listen to the shepherds.  The young couple who came to our door  looking for a place to stay aren’t from Bethlehem at all.  I heard them say they live in Nazareth.  And I heard my mother say something else after father turned them away.  She heard from a cousin in Shiloh who has a friend in Nazareth that the baby was conceived before they were married.

 I know.  Don’t look so shocked.  I shouldn’t be talking about such things.  But that’s what my mother said, and she didn’t even try too hard to keep me from over-hearing.  That’s why I am so upset with her and with father.  To think that they would worry about what a cousin in Shiloh heard from a friend in Nazareth instead of listening to an entire heavenly choir of angels.  To think that they would trust gossip from Nazareth instead of the very word of God through the prophet Micah.  I just can’t understand it. 

What an opportunity to miss.  Why, I bet that people would have been building replicas of our inn to remind them of this night for hundreds of years to come.  And what will they have to build instead?  Mangers.  Mangers!

God sent us a king.  A king like David.  Right here in Bethlehem.  And my parents, my very own father and mother made him be born in a manger. 

Oh, you’ll have to forgive me.  I love them.  I really do.  But I will never understand them.  Never!  Never!  Never!