Paul Harvey: The Bethlehem Innkeeper

This article by Paul Harvey in 1965, probably should have been in the December Newsletter, but I heard it on the radio just before Christmas and it reminded me of an article I read about twenty years ago.            “The Bethlehem Inn Keeper has been getting a bad rap. The Christmas season and sometimes in between, pulpits are a flamed with righteous wrath over the 'Jesus Born In A Manger'  story. The very idea that men have waited through twenty centuries of darkness and the long sought light had to enter the world thru the window of a stable. Prophets of the old testament have told them when and where to expect the baby and approximately when.  And yet the inn keeper did not even reserve a room.                                  Well now lets hold the phone here. The inn keeper has been getting a bad rap! If Robert Schuller  was not the first to remind us, he was certainly the most eloquent, when once upon a Christmas time he re-recited the  Bethlehem story, and he protested that the inn keeper had become the victim of cheap shots by preachers, teachers and pageant writers. The Bible does not accuse the inn keeper. Joseph did not complain to the inn keeper. Mary did not complain.                                                                                            Actually the stable was a cave in a hill side where cattle lived. It had many advantages over a room at the inn. The inn of Bethlehem was no Marriott Hotel. It was a place where the masses collected: ruffians and thieves and heavy drinkers - rowdy men. In the inn there would have been no soft straw bed. Mary would have had to lie on a hard floor. The inn was jam packed a tax-paying time. The groans and natural screams of a teenage mother delivering her first baby would have been over heard in other rooms.                       In the stable was privacy, where nobody would overhear her labor. No leering eyes would peer upon a woman giving birth. The stable was safe and secure and warmer than the inn. The inn was without heat. No furnaces. No more than one lobby fireplace. But the wide nostrils of cattle exhaling steam, breathing in the cold air and breathing out warm air warmed the stable.                                                                   What might Joseph have done to protect his tax money from thieves and ruffians in the inn? Yet, in the safety of the stable there was no fear of a knife at ones throat in the night.                                               So, God and the inn keeper cooperated to provide a perfect place for Jesus to be born- a safe place, a quiet, soft, warm, comparatively comfortable, perfect place.                                                                               And besides, the much maligned inn keeper in Bethlehem had given the best that he had. And that is all that is asked of any of us”                                                                                    Paul Harvey              And now as Paul Harvey would say is the “rest of the story.” I read an article in  Our Daily Bread, about twenty years ago. It was written by a women who as a young girl was traveling thru China with her missionary parents in the early 1900's. It was on one Christmas Eve they came to an inn and the inn keeper told them that there was no room. The little country inns in China at the time where very similar too the inns of  Bethlehem where Jesus was born. She remembered trying to sleep in inns on other occasions, a crowded room full of other people talking, smoking coughing all night long while trying to sleep on a hard wood bench or some times the floor.                                                                                                              But on this Christmas Eve night, the inn keeper said they were welcome to spend the night in the stable in the back. She said when they got to the stable it was warmer than the inn and they spread there bed rolls out on the soft hay that was plentiful in the stable. She recalled that on that night her family had one of the most restful nights that they had in a long time. As she grew older remembering that experience she often thought that it had to be part of God's plan to provide the stable for Jesus to be born.                                     As a side note, I was fortunate to remember as a young boy  similar experiences. We lived across the field from my grand parents who had a small farmstead with a few cows , chickens, turkeys etc. There was a small barn where my grandfather in the winter had it stacked to the ceiling with hay for the winter. As kids on the coldest winter days we would often climb to the top of the pile and snuggle down in the hay to warm up. I can also remember going in to the barn when my grandfather was milking and feeling the heat from the cows. I can still picture him sitting there milking. I also still have the stool he used to sit on.                                                                                                                                                                                 Bob W.                          And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.                        Luke 2: 4,7