Advent 2019: Day Seventeen: Good Tidings of Comfort and Boys

I know it looks like I've skipped a bunch of days, but the in-between reflections were posted elsewhere on social media. However, today's offering is a longer story and I felt would be better presented here. For today, enjoy this story by Dragonfly:

Good Tidings of Comfort and Boys*

Talmai was not prepared for this.

Bethlehem was a warm, hospitable town. Most of the time, weary travelers could stay the night in a stranger’s home, and the rooms of Talmai’s inn filled with traveling tax collectors, forbidden lovers, and the occasional Samaritan. But this? This would be chaos.

He swept the floor of his inn and grimaced at the soiled linens on the bed. He hoped that stain would wash out easily enough. But if hundreds of people would be coming to Jerusalem, how picky could they be about their bedsheets?

Hundreds of people. Dear father of Isaac, he dreaded the census.

This was the first time Talmai had to prepare his inn for so many people, and it made him wonder why anyone ever left their ancestral town to begin with. Talmai was a descendant of David, and he’d never left his forefather's town of Bethlehem.

Still, people would be coming, and Talmai didn’t want word to spread that his inn was a refuge for the tax collectors and sinners. He was already having a difficult enough time finding a woman to marry.

“Thought you’d be here,” a man said in a voice that Talmai recognized all too well.

“I don’t have time for you right now, Anani.”

“But I’m here to help!” he said, walking up behind Talmai and wrapping his arm around him. “Wow. Someone… really had fun with that sheet.”

“If you want to help, washing that sheet would be a good start,” Talmai muttered. When Anani walked up to the bed and pulled off the cloth, he asked, “What are you doing?”

“Helping,” Anani replied, earning a disbelieving glare. “I’m telling the truth! Why do you think I’m here to stress you out?”

“You’re going to get us both stoned to death.”

“For washing linens?” he asked, only to snicker. “Or for wishing we were the reason they needed to be washed?”

Talmai shot the man a death glare. “If the two of us are going to survive this census, I can’t be seen with you for the next few months.”

Anani’s sly grin settled into something more solemn. “I know. I just wanted to enjoy the few minutes we had left.”

Talmai’s chest tightened at that, and he didn’t push Anani away when he leaned in to kiss him. He should have—Anani was danger, he was failure, he was God’s wrath. Anani was death. But he was also warmth and kindness, hopeful smiles and cheerful laughs. He was the only force that could melt away Talmai’s debilitating guilt. No matter how hard Talmai tried, he could never satisfy the Law. But he was always good enough in Anani’s eyes. “You… You have to go. I’ll never finish cleaning in time.”

“Yeah, I understand. But… Do you ever pray that it didn’t have to be this way?” Anani asked, broad blacksmith shoulders drooping like a disappointed child’s.

“Why would the Lord listen to prayers from people like us?”

“He can’t be all-knowing if he doesn’t hear what we have to say.” Anani turned to face the door. “But… I’ll let you get back to cleaning. I’ll see you again, whenever that is.”

“I look forward to that,” Talmai said softly as Anani closed the door. He gazed wistfully at the bed, wondering...

Oh, for the love of—! Anani walked out with the sheet, didn’t he?

An hour or two later, when the walls and floor looked new and he could smell nothing but the hay mattress, he moved to the next room, exhausted. To his surprise, a stack of neatly folded linens sat on the bed. Only one looked out of place, and when Talmai unwrapped it, he found a loaf of bread inside. A wave of previously forgotten hunger crashed on him, and he bit into the bread immediately.

Talmai wanted to obey God. He really did. But the seductive force of food and clean laundry was too powerful for a mere mortal like himself to resist.

---

“I don’t have any room. I’m sorry,” Talmai said for the hundredth time that week.

“Please! We don’t have anywhere else to go,” a man begged. “The children can’t travel any further.”

A little girl looked up at Talmai with wide, teary eyes, and he sighed. “I… I guess I could allow your wife and children a space in my own living quarters for a day, to give you time to find something more permanent.”

“Thank you,” the mother said, sniffling.

By the end of the day, Talmai was so tired that he fell asleep without so much as eating, and he woke up groggily the next morning and blinked a couple of times, jumping out of bed when his vision came into focus. Everything was gone. Water jugs, furniture, clothes… the house was barren. As he pieced together what happened, all he could do was cry. He knew God looked disdainfully upon him, but he hadn’t expected this.

But people still knocked on his door, still begged for shelter. He turned away all of them, trying to keep his voice steady as people yelled at him and spat on him for his lack of empathy. Some nodded solemnly and wept—he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t offer his home to those kind few at this point, since he had nothing else to lose, but clearly his hospitality was no gift in the eyes of the Most High.

Later that day, another person knocked on his door, and he trudged out to them. “There’s no room for anyone else here.”

“Please, we’ll take anything,” the man begged.

“I don’t have anything. You’ll have to find lodging elsewhere.”

“My wife is going into labor. We don’t have time.”

Compassion welled up within Talmai again, and he hated himself for it. Any time he cared about another person, it hurt him somehow, but he could never learn his lesson. “I… I have a stable. It’s dirty and my animals are in there, but it has a roof.” At least, he hoped his animals were still in there. He couldn’t say he had checked, but it couldn’t be easy to steal a cow, could it?

“That’s all we could ask for; thank you,” the man said, pressing money into Talmai’s hands, and Talmai led the couple to the stable. His cattle and sheep were there, and he offered a prayer of thanks to the Lord in spite of himself. He was hungry, but he wouldn’t starve.

The woman was obviously in pain, but she managed a smile and said, “You have surely earned favor in the eyes of the Lord.”

“Uh, thanks. Good luck with…that,” he replied, gesturing vaguely at the woman’s abdomen.

Oh… He had money. He’d been paid as if he’d offered a full room, which he might have felt guilty about taking if he weren’t so hungry. Now he could travel into town and buy food. He felt dizzy and weak as he walked, but soon enough he had a cooked fish to eat. Afterward, he barely had enough money to buy a small, misshapen jug, which he filled with water from the well. It wouldn’t be long until he had enough money to eat a full meal, he reassured himself. The man with the pregnant wife was the only one who paid him upfront, so he could expect the other tenants to pay him tomorrow morning. Provided they didn’t walk out on him, anyway. His expectations were low.

The sky was darkening by the minute, and as Talmai walked home, he noticed a bright, shining star above his inn. He’d never seen anything like it in his life, and he put down his jug of water for a moment in awe. By the time he arrived home, shepherds were crowded around the stable. Oh, because apparently his animals needed to be stolen, too. He dashed over furiously, as if he and his lumpy water jug stood a chance against people who fought bears for a living, but stopped when he saw that everything was in its proper place.

“The Messiah has been born!” one shepherd exclaimed as the others shouted about angels and babies. Talmai pushed his way to the front of the crowd and locked eyes on a newborn baby, wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

“That couldn’t be the Messiah. The Lord wouldn’t send a savior here,” Talmai said without thinking. It was true, though—this was an inn by a sinner, for sinners.

“I understand how you feel, believe me,” the mother said. “I suppose it’s the Lord’s way of saying that there’s no place his grace can’t reach... That he will never turn his back on his children.”

“That… That can’t...”

“Thank you for your hospitality. Your generosity hasn’t gone unnoticed by the Most High. May he grant you peace.”

Talmai nodded and stepped away, crying as soon as he was out of sight. God wouldn’t bless someone like him…right?

He stepped back into his home to find two jugs—one filled with oil and the other with flour. His eyes landed on the fireplace, where a kettle sat, and he shook his head with a smile.

Maybe God’s blessing had been there the entire time.

(*EDIT: The story was originally published with the title The Census. It has been updated.)