PETER’S STORY

My name is Peter.  When I was a boy growing up I lived in a small town called Bethlehem.   My father owned a flock of sheep and my brother and I had to tend them.  My brother was older than I was so he tended the flock during the day and I tended them at night.

There was a small shed at the bottom of the hill where our sheep grazed and inside there were always some animals and in the center of the shed was a hay manger.  In one corner of the shed I made a pallet of hay and during the night I would sneak in there to get out of the cold and maybe take a nap.

One evening while I was tending father’s sheep I noticed a man, and a woman who was riding on a donkey, enter the shed.  I went down and snuck into the shed and sat on my pallet and watched as the man made a bed of hay for the woman to sleep on.  I wondered why they were there instead of getting a room at the inn.

The next night a wondrous thing happened.  A bright star was hovering over the shed and dimly illuminating it and the hillside where I was tending the sheep.

I heard the woman making noises like I had heard women in the village making similar noises when giving birth to a child.  By he time I got to the shed the woman had given birth to a baby boy.  She was holding the boy to her breast and her husband had his arm around her.

The star and the light continued and after a couple of days I noticed three camels making their way to our village from the east.  But instead of going into our village they turned off the road and went to the shed where they ordered the camels to kneel and then they dismounted them and went into the shed.

I snuck back into the shed and watched the three men, who were draped in the finest robes, offer gifts to the baby boy’s mother.

Then they went to the hay manger where the baby boy was laying and knelt down.  They stayed that way for quite a long time before getting up and mounting their camels and going back from where they came.

The little family stayed on for a few days and all the while that strange star dimly illuminated our hillside and that shed,

Then one evening the star was gone and the hillside and shed were dark.  When I went to the shed it was empty except for some animals.

When my brother and I grew up to be men, he inherited the flock of sheep and I went out into the world to make a living.

I became a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee.  I had a boat and some nets and a crew of men to help me lay out the nets and haul in the fish.

Many times while the nets were down and the boat was just drifting I would think back of those nights as a boy in Bethlehem and the mystery star and the light and the baby that was born in the shed.  I wondered if the boy had grown up and become a man and what he was like and if I would ever see him.

Then my reverie would be broken when one of my crew would yell out, “Wake up Peter, it’s time to haul in the fish.”

Noel Sivertson - 12/18/2024