Frantic.
The cobbled road was filled with shops and stands and screaming
vendors. The vagrant merchants and their camels blew to and fro just
like the sand. Countless Jews from every tribe weaved in and out the
empty spaces, while temple guards and Roman soldiers eyed with
caution every face. And then you saw her.
Her
face was white. Her hands were trembling. The tears flowed slowly
down her cheeks as she ran from Jew to merchant, guard to soldier,
traveler to beggar. “Have you seen him?” she cried, “Have you
seen my son?”
Her
tears fell faster as each answer was cruelly thrust into her heart.
Hopeless. And then the man that walked beside her put his arm around
her shoulder, and gently kissed her forehead. He was tall and he was
strong; and he held her like a mother, even though she was his wife.
He too was trembling.
And
then he saw it. Raising his arm, the man then pointed towards the
place where their hope still remained intact: the temple.
And
they ran. Every alcove, every pillar, round every gate and portico –
over the blue-white marble they looked for him, but to no avail. And
as her heart began to tear to pieces, she fell into her husband’s
arms, and wept bitterly. But her husband wasn’t weeping, he was
listening. And then, hiding in the silence, whispered the young
voice he knew so well. It gently brushed across the limestone, then
it hummed and echoed through the air, omnipresent.
He
softly tapped her on the shoulder, his eyes captured by the sound.
And the mother who was weeping stopped and turned and looked at
Joseph; and with a happy quiver in her voice, she slowly said His
Name,
“Jesus.”
It
wasn’t anything normal that caught Joseph’s eye. It wasn’t the
whitewashed clay walls that ran around his small house; nor the
papyrus shoots lashed together on the roof. It wasn’t the shifting
palms that swayed gently in the Egyptian breeze; nor the camels and
their riders that swayed with them. It wasn’t his young son
playing with his carpentry tools on the dirt floor; nor was it his
beautiful wife knitting a woolen shawl in the room beside him. It
was the strange man who walked into the carpentry shop: the man who,
it seemed, only Joseph could see.
Joseph rested his tools on the unfinished table and stared deep into
the strange man’s eyes. The man began to speak: a familiar tone,
but one Joseph hadn’t heard in a long time. When the man finished,
Joseph turned to look at his son and his wife, and when he turned his
head back toward the stranger, the stranger was gone.
Both
his wife and the boy sensed something different in Joseph’s gaze.
They stood up and walked over to Joseph. Joseph held them in his
arms, and then he spoke,
“Jesus,
Mary,” he said, “we’re going home.”
I like it :) very calming.
ReplyDeleteThank you for reading. And nice meeting you.
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