Part 5

What a day… what a night!

My waters broke just after breakfast – two weeks early! And the contractions started almost immediately, as if Yeshua were suddenly in a hurry to be born! I was scared because everything seemed to be happening so quickly, and Joseph started running around frantically, not knowing what to do. But Matthias persuaded Susannah to do the decent thing and fetch the local midwife.

Tabitha was fantastic… I can’t praise her enough. She was very old and had hardly any teeth left, but she obviously knew what she was doing. And she was so kind: she didn’t make any scornful remarks or ask any awkward questions! She was shocked to discover that we had nothing ready for the baby, and bullied Susannah into tearing up an old dress so that we would have something to wrap him in. (I know this sounds ungracious, but it was a treat to listen to her!) Then she sent Joseph on various errands, to keep him out of the way.

Yeshua was born just as it was getting dark, but by the time Tabitha had finished tidying up and helping me to feed him, it was nearly midnight. Joseph still hadn’t finished nailing some pieces of wood together to make a cot, so we put Yeshua into the feed-trough just for one night. We were absolutely shattered, but we didn’t get much sleep. Less than an hour after Tabitha had gone home, there was a loud hammering at the door. Matthias went to see who it was, complaining loudly. Then we heard men’s voices outside, asking about the baby. The next thing I knew, the house was full of people with muddy sandals, all talking excitedly and begging to “see Messiah”.

I wondered where they had all come from, and how they had found out about Yeshua so quickly. They said that they were shepherds, and that their regular ‘night shift’ in the hills had been interrupted by a whole army of angels, announcing the birth of Messiah in Bethlehem that very night and singing praises to God. They had even been told that he was lying in a feed-trough, wrapped in strips of cloth! With that information, they had gone straight to Tabitha’s house – and of course she knew exactly where to send them.

One of the younger lads said, “But he looks just like any other baby!” And that’s true: he has the right number of fingers and toes, and he cries and sucks just like any normal baby. But Joseph and I know that he isn’t a normal baby – in some unique and miraculous way he’s come to us from God. And although it’s hard to understand, this is obviously how and where God wanted him to be born – in Bethlehem.

But why did God send angels only to those shepherds – people whose word doesn’t count for anything? Why couldn’t He send one to the whole town, or at least to Matthias and Susannah, and make them believe? Because they still don’t accept that anything out of the ordinary is going on: they’re talking this morning about “the crazy things that shepherds think they see and hear when they’ve had too much wine”!


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Tabitha returned this afternoon to see how I was – and she brought a basket full of gifts for us! There was even a fleece to wrap Yeshua in on cold nights! I was amazed: I thought she had come back to ask for her fee.

I felt guilty about receiving things from her, but she insisted that she didn’t want any payment. “The Almighty has blessed me beyond my wildest dreams,” she said. “Nobody ever remembers the midwife, and I’ll never live to see him grow up, but I shall die a happy woman, knowing that it was I who had the honour of delivering the Messiah.”

“What makes you so sure?” asked Joseph.

“When those shepherds came to my house… something had put the fear of God into them, and they had to be telling the truth – for once. There was no other way that they could have known all those details.” She looked at me. “And I already knew that there was something different about you.”