“Mom!”

Isaac burst through the door as the sun rose. “Mom, where are you?”

“I’m making bread, Isaac. What is it?” I called through the kitchen. Isaac, my youngest, and most rambunctious child.

“I have something to tell you!” He was smiling, he seemed different this morning. Usually when he had spent the night in the field, he would come home exhausted and grumpy. This morning he was more excited than I had ever seen him before.

“What is it? Do you want to tell your brothers and father? They are already gone.”

“I’ll find them later. I have to tell you now!”

As I kneaded the dough, the boy told me of messengers coming from the heavens telling the shepherds in the field of a baby born in our city - the house of bread - Bethlehem. The baby would be our Messiah, our anointed one, like King David of old had said.

Before I could ask Isaac any questions, he was gone. He was so excited about seeing the angels and the baby, he wanted to go out and tell everyone about it.

I considered his story and went outside to put the bread in the sun.

“Have you heard the story, Naomi?” I asked my neighbor.

“Story?” She laughed. “You mean, the prophecy?” She smiled at me knowingly. “He’s going to be King.”

“How could he be King?” I responded. “Herod will have him killed first. Afterall, he’s only a day old!”

Another neighbor joined us, “Did you hear about the virgin?” We nodded.

“They say she’s as young as Izzy, but now she’s had a baby.”

“Isn’t she married?” Naomi asked, “Perhaps she wasn’t a virgin afterall.”

“She got pregnant when they were only engaged though.”

All of us had been engaged before we were fully made wives, it was like marriage. We lived in the home of our husbands, but we did not sleep with them until after our marriage ceremonies.

“Abigail, Izzy’s going around telling everyone she was a virgin and that the child doesn’t belong to Joseph at all. It belongs to God.” They looked at me, waiting for my response.

I sat down to consider all that I had heard.

“He is in the line of David?” I asked.

“Yes.” They answered together.

“He could be the fulfillment of God’s promise to King David through the prophet Nathan. The Lord did proclaim to David ‘I will be His father, He will be my son’.”

“But how will we know?” Naomi asked.

“The messengers told the shepherds last night.” I said. “The word of the Lord came down to them as it had to our prophet Isaiah ‘For to us a child is born, to us a son is given’ he will be the ‘Prince of Peace’.”

“You think this was really God’s baby then?” The other woman asked.

“Isaiah did foretell of a young woman, a virgin woman who would be a sign to us that God was with us. ‘Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel’.”

“But who can say if she really was a virgin?” The other woman scoffed again.

“Joseph did not leave her when he knew she was pregnant.” Naomi defended the young mother.

“Maybe it’s his kid.”

“And now that they are married, why wouldn’t they tell the truth? Why then would the angels proclaim that he is Lord?” Naomi pressed, the other woman shrugged and left.

Questions and rumors circulated the city the whole week. Relatives of Joseph took different sides, some said the baby was born through the power of God’s Holy Spirit. Others looked down upon Joseph and his young wife Mary as liars and lunatics. This wasn’t the first time someone had claimed to give birth to the Savior of the world and our Messiah. But never had there been so many stories of angels and fulfilled prophecies. Many of us knew Joseph’s family line from the old stories of Israel’s rise and fall from power. He was from the line of David, so perhaps the King had come to reclaim the throne after all these centuries.

————————————————————————————————————————————-

“Mom,” Isaac burst through the door in the mid afternoon, “I’m starving. What’s for lunch?” He asked, sitting down on a pillow. His voice had brought me out of my thoughts about this new Prince of Peace.

“Is your father coming home to eat? Or your brothers?”

“I don’t know.” He answered, stuffing fresh bread in his mouth. “I haven’t seen them in a few hours.”

“Isaac, what have you been doing?”

“Well, me and some of the other shepherds have been going around telling people about last night!” He was laughing with excitement, of course, my Isaac was laughing.

“I asked what I should call the baby. I asked his dad, do you know what he said?”

“The baby has not yet been circumcised, does he already have a name?” I asked, my son who was nodding.

“I think it means something.”

“I’m sure it does. Most names have meaning. Not everyone understands Hebrew, but some of us still know.”

“Does my name mean something?” I laughed at the young man who still seemed like a little boy to me, but was growing his beard and working as a man.

“Your name means laughter. Just like Abraham and Sarah laughed with joy when they had their Isaac. So did we laugh with joy when we had you.”

“What does your name mean?”

“My name means my father’s joy. And your friend Adah, she was named adornment, because her parents have so many beautiful daughters, they are like a collection of jewels.”

“Adah’s alright.” He blushed.

“What name did Joseph say he would give the child?”

“Well, it’s not exactly the name he picked.” I looked at my son questioningly.

“He said an angel told him to name him Jesus.” The bowl I was holding dropped from my hands and shattered on the floor.

“Woah! What are you doing?”

“He is our salvation.” I whispered.

“What?”

“His name means: ‘God saves’. It is the same name we call Joshua by when we remember how he led our people out of the desert and into the promised land.”

Isaac responded, “But Joseph didn’t say anything about the promised land.”

“What did Joseph say about his son’s name?” I asked.

“He said Jesus was given that name because ‘he will save his people from their sins’, but I don’t really know what he meant by that and since the other guys all nodded, I didn’t want to ask.”

With a shrug Isaac stood and left our home, without asking me what it meant. I was not disappointed though, I wasn’t sure if I knew what Joseph meant.

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

With all the excitement in Bethlehem the week went by quickly. We all expected that Mary and Joseph would go to the temple in due time to dedicate their baby to the Lord as he was their firstborn son. They would also make a sacrifice, though they were poor, for their sins and uncleaness, it should have been a lamb, but because they were poor it would have to be a dove. We all had to make sacrifices for our sins, so what did it mean that this baby would take our sin away?

After I heard they had gone, I went to find an older woman, Anna, who was always at the temple. She had lost her husband when she was quite young, and instead of remarrying she had devoted herself to loving God alone. She was like a mentor to me; she knew all the Scriptures, the Law, the Words of the Prophets, even the Poetry, and she taught me. She had been in the temple when Joseph and Mary brought Jesus. I wanted to know if she believed that he was the Messiah we were waiting on to save us.

After greeting me Anna told me her story of seeing Jesus, the Son of God, in the arms of his human mother.

“So you do believe that he is the Son of God?” I asked her.

“You know that I spend my days worshiping with fasting and prayer.”

I nodded, everyone knew how devout she was. “When I came to the temple that morning, as that little family walked in, I knew in my soul that Jesus is the one we have been waiting for! The one who will redeem all of our people!”

She sounded so confident. “Of course it is him. He has even fulfilled the prophet Micah’s words : “Though Bethlemhem is small ‘out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel...He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth. And he will be our peace’” Anna quoted the Scriptures to me.

There had been silence from our God for centuries, Micah’s were the last words we had from our Lord. We had been waiting, and with all the messengers from heaven, with all the prophecies fulfilled. “You believe he will save us from our sins?”

“God saves.” She said his name to me. I couldn’t help but believe, with Anna, that this baby would someday be our great Shepherd. He would take care of us, provide for us, and save us. Anna was telling everyone who came into the temple that our anointed King of Israel, our Messiah, had come!

I couldn’t wait to go home and tell my son the story.