Experience the joy
and magic of the first Christmas story as experienced by two boys. David is a young Jewish boy, living in
Persia, learning to be a scribe, when the star first appears. David had been adopted by one of the wise
men, Gaspar, when his father had passed away, and goes as an interpreter for
the wise men. Thomas, a young shepherd
boy, is there when the angel announces the Christ child. Almost two years
later, he meets David and leads him and the wise men to the house of Joseph,
Mary and Jesus in Bethlehem. Along the
way, David learns lessons about faith, and about accepting differences in all
people who would worship the Christ child!
The excerpt below is where Thomas sees the angel.
Angel
Encounter
Thomas
liked these cold nights with his daddy.
Somehow the cold night air made everything feel more real, and made him
feel more alive. He loved snuggling
close to his daddy and feeling his body getting all warm from his daddy’s
warmth.
His mother
had died a year ago, and his daddy had felt that, at seven years old, he was
old enough to come with to help care for the sheep, so the little boy spent
most of his life now outdoors. He was eight
years old now, and knew that he was missing out on school, but his daddy taught
him all the scripture stories, and he had learned enough reading before his
mother died that he felt he could get by, so he didn’t worry about it. Whenever he got into town, he would visit
with his friends and play with them. His
lack of schooling did not seem to affect his friendships.
Earlier
that afternoon, his daddy had taken him up to a high crag. They had looked down on the town of Bethlehem David Jerusalem that extended up to and including Bethlehem Bethlehem
Thomas
listened carefully. He loved to learn
from his daddy, and felt that his daddy was the smartest man in the world. After they returned to the sheep fold, his daddy
sang some Psalms with him. He loved this
too. He loved the feeling of comfort and
safety that the words of the Psalms gave him.
The last one they sang was a song of prayer, calling for God to send his
Salvation quickly. The little boy sighed
contentedly. He loved to praise and
worship God! Then he snuggled under the
blanket, against the warmth of his daddy, and fell asleep.
He wasn’t
sure what woke him. Was it a sound? Was it a light? There was a light in the sky, one that was
hard to look at. He crawled out of his
blankets. Everyone seemed to be
asleep. Shivering in the cold, he
grabbed his cloak and pulled it around his bare shoulders and walked to the
door of the sheepfold, the ground cold to his bare feet, staring up, squinting
at the brightness of the light.
What was he
looking at? As his eyes became more
accustomed to the light, he realized that it was a man. The man was shining so bright it hurt his
eyes to look at him! The man was
standing about 50 feet away from the door of the sheepfold, on the
mountain. As he looked at him, he felt a
shock of fright go through him! There
was something unnatural, terrible and awesome about the man! A white-hot gush of fright was exploding deep
inside of him. It ran up the front of
his tummy and burned into his chest, making it impossible for him to breathe! He was sure his heart had stopped!
“DADDY!” he
screamed in terror, falling to his face.
He was so frightened he couldn’t get his breath to scream again. He was suffocating with the terror coursing
through his little body! He wanted it to stop more than anything he had ever
experienced!
Shouts
behind him told him that his cry was heard.
“What is it?” several men yelled.
Then he heard their gasps.
He heard
his daddy’s voice, unsteady beside him, saying “God have mercy on us, what is
this?” Then all was quiet.
Shaking
with terror, still unable to get his breath, Thomas didn’t dare to raise his
head. He was certain he would die, yet
he wanted the terror to end so badly that he thought it might be a relief if he
did die! He could sense the intense
whiteness of the glow, coming past his arms that were shielding his head, and
through his eyelids. It was like a terrible
nightmare. He wanted it to go away so
badly!
“Don’t be
afraid!” He knew the words were from the creature, because they penetrated
through his mind and body as no words had ever done before!
Something
in the voice caused the terror to cease.
You could not resist that voice when it spoke! His tummy was still churning with the
aftermath of the terror that had gushed through it, but the source of the
terror was gone. He could breathe again,
and he took in air in great gasps, sobbing, but with relief now.
He raised
his head and looked at the man. This
time he saw that the eyes radiated love: A love that was so strong, that it erased
the last traces of his fear, and though still trembling, gasping and sobbing,
he was able to kneel upright and look right at him. His cloak fell off, exposing his bare upper
body, but he was not cold. The warmth of that love seemed to fill his entire
body. Never had he seen such a face, or
such a being! It was like a man: It had
arms, legs, a body and a head, yet it was clearly not a normal man. The being
radiated a power and an authority that was awesome and terrible all at the same
time. Thomas realized that all the
shepherds had stood or were kneeling, facing the creature. His daddy’s arm was around him now, and he
could feel his daddy trembling. The
creature continued to talk:
“I bring to
you good news, that shall bring joy to all nations! For this day, in the city of David
Thomas had
almost stopped sobbing when the creature began to speak again, but as soon as
the creature said the word “joy”, it brought an explosion of joy to him, and he
began sobbing hard again, this time for sheer joy. He was aware that the men all around him were
doing the same. Now a new sensation of
joy filled him so completely, that he was conscious of it filling his tummy,
pushing out the fear, filling his chest so that his little heart felt like it
would burst! He felt it in the tips of
his bare toes, and the palms of his hands, and to the top of his scalp! The joy was as overpowering as the terror had
been! He couldn’t help himself; the
sobbing was quickly replaced by giggling! The joy had him giggling helplessly, with
total abandon, yet there was no sense of it being irreverent. It was the right thing for a little boy to do
in the face of such immense joy! He
simply couldn’t help himself!
The
creature, its face glowing with love and joy, spoke again. “This will be how you will know the
child. He will be wrapped in swaddling
clothes, lying in a manger.”
As he was
speaking, the sky was getting brighter and brighter. Thomas looked up at it. The sky was full of more of these
creatures. Thomas had never seen a crowd
as big as this. Even when he was five
and visited the temple in Jerusalem with his daddy and mommy, he had never seen
this many people. The creatures began to
sing. Their words were “Glory to God in
the Highest, and on earth, peace, good-will toward men.” The effects of these words were a sense of
awe and wonder. The giggling stopped,
now he found himself singing, his young voice combined with the older voices of
the shepherds, they could not help but sing the words of the song that the
creatures were singing.
Somehow, they
knew exactly what to sing, words and melody coming from their hearts. Thomas felt like the song originated
somewhere deep in his tummy, gushed up through his heart and exploded out of
his mouth. The song drew a sense of
wonder and praise for God right out of the center of his being! He felt that God deserved the glory, and was
awed that God would have good-will toward him. He sensed that it was to be
taken personally by any who heard it!
As the song
ended, Thomas and the shepherds bowed their heads; the brightness was too great
to look at. Then, the light disappeared
and all was dark again, except for the flickering light from their fire.
Thomas
looked up; he could not see in the dark.
“Daddy, where are you?” he asked in a shaky voice.
“I’m here
beside you.” He felt his daddy’s arm
squeeze him again.
He felt his
daddy pick him up and hold him close. He
had tears running down his cheeks. He
put his hand up, and could feel the same on his daddy’s cheek. “Daddy, I can’t stop crying, but I’m not
sad!”
“Me too,
little shepherd, me too.” His daddy said, in a trembling voice.
Another
voice; that of the eldest shepherd Eli, echoed the thought. “I too cannot contain the joy.” His voice shook with emotion.
Thomas
could see now. His eyes had gotten
accustomed to the dark again. They
walked back to the fire and stoked it up.
No one thought of sleeping. None of them spoke. For a minute, as the fire rose, they just
stood staring at it.
Thomas
frowned. “Daddy, what were those
things?”
Eli
answered in an awe-struck voice. “Those
were angels. I believe that the one who
spoke would have been the Angel of the Lord.”
“Oh!” said
Thomas. He thought for a moment, then
asked. “Don’t angels tell us what God
wants us to do?”
“Yes!” Eli
answered. No one else seemed to want to
talk.
“Why would
the angel tell us how to find the baby?
Does that mean that God wants us to go see him?”
The men
around the fire looked at each other, startled.
“Yes! Of course!” It was Thomas’ daddy speaking. “We must go, right now, and see this thing,
which the Lord has shown to us!”
One of the
younger shepherds asked “What of the sheep?”
Eli spoke
without hesitation. “If God has called
us to do this, our sheep will be safe.
We will close the sheepfold, but we must all go to see this thing, at
once!”
It only
took a few moments to make things ready.
Thomas pulled his tunic on and picked up his cloak, putting it around
his shoulders.
“Daddy, how
long will it take us to get to Bethlehem in the dark?” He asked. He knew how
long it would take in daylight. He’d never walked it at night.
His daddy
looked up at the sky. The moon had come
from behind a cloud, and a very bright star, that Thomas did not recall ever
seeing, giving good light. “If we have
moon light, we can make good time, and be there in two hours. I don’t know how we’ll find what we’re
looking for there, but God will see us through!
We will be tired, but we should be back here by morning. I will carry you on my shoulders if you get
too tired.”
...
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