The stars came down

by Maxwell Ryan

The big stones hurt.  It wasn’t that the donkey couldn’t see, though.  Its splintered unshod hooves pawed for a hold on the shifting slopes.  The stocky man at its side pulled on the knotted and sweaty rope halter and grunted with the strain.

On the donkey’s back a woman lurched.  She was large with pregnancy and her thin, compressed lips blued with grimace.

“God, my God, how long?”

The verbal sounds caused the donkey’s long dirty-grey ears to wag as if in protest.  The man implored with glance and gripped, with sinewed tautness, the shoulder of his wife.

Her head relaxed now and her eyes were filled with dreamy distance and the primitive joy of new motherhood.  The close and heavy air of the stable absorbed the newest sound of tiny life as a new-born baby, wrapped in rags, strained with unknowing fierceness to fill his lungs with the breath of life.

Star-shine from the winter’s sky brought into craggy relief the worried face of the man.  His tuneless whistling blended with the hoarse breathing of the donkey, lost in a twitching-eared sleep a few feet away.

The wonder in his mind far outran his immediate concern for wife and son.  Still heard with inner ears were the words of the angel who had appeared some months ago.  He glanced again at the wrinkled newness of the baby and in a voice rough with tenderness spoke the name: “Jesus!” His wife reached out fingers puffy with strain and grasped his arm.  Their glances locked and each held the other’s gaze for what seemed an eternity.  Words seemed to tumble across the bridge made with their eyes - “Immanuel, King of kings, Saviour, Lord, Alpha and Omega . . .”

Time stopped for an instant as hope lived again.  The heavens rang with vaults of exquisite song. A gigantic star blazed out the coming of the King who slept in the crook of his mother’s arm.

Writer: Lieut.-Colonel Maxwell Ryan is a former Editor in Chief in Canada and the UK. In retirement has been a copy editor of theRubicon and the author of two series on theRubicon - Resurrected Writers and Thinkaloud

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