Miriam sat with two other women outside her small house and watched their children playing dustily together in the warm afternoon sun while they took a break from the daily chores of living a humble life in a small Judean town. Behind her she could hear Yosef in the house that served as his tiny workshop as well as their home.

The house belonging to Yosef's family had been their home for the first few months of their son's life and they had loved being surrounded by caring relatives - in addition to the visitors coming to see the baby everyone was talking about.

The shepherds turning up early on the day he was born had only been the start; especially once they had spent the next few days making sure there wasn't a soul in the town who hadn't heard about angelic visitations in the middle of the night, or how they reckoned a star had miraculously pointed them to the family house where the baby was born.

Shepherds telling everyone they met that Miriam's baby was the long-prophesied Messiah hadn't helped to quell the flow of curious visitors to the house, leading to some tension with Yosef's long-suffering relatives! Two years on, the shepherds had calmed down (a bit!) and the town had accepted the presence of - at least on the surface - just another laughing, crying, growing baby. She had even taken her baby down the hill to the groves and caves where the same shepherds raised the sheep for temple sacrifices. [1] They usually gave her a kid to cook that was less than the perfect animal required by the Torah's sacrificial regulations.

She and Yosef had talked together about going back to Nazareth, where Yosef had been part of his family's thriving carpentry and joinery business. Mary missed her family, even though her mother had made the week-long journey to visit her and the new baby. She had even had a visit from her Aunt Elisheva with her (also miraculous) son Yohanan. He was a little older than her own boy, but they had played well together and seemed to have a strange bond that went beyond baby hugs and toy tussles. Almost as if they knew their lives were going to be intertwined in the future.

Now, two years after the fuss around the miraculous and highly embarrassing birth, the little town of Bethlehem was a-buzz again. This time it was caused by other visitors - a whole caravan of them. And some caravan it was! A group of richly dressed sages from Babylon and beyond, clearly wealthy and influential, with what seemed like a small town's worth of servants, soldiers and attendants. [2] A whole herd of donkeys carried many of the people and there were camels! Hardly anyone they knew had even seen a camel, let alone a whole line of them. Men and women at their end of the economic scale were lucky to borrow a donkey or a mule to carry their things, but camels!?    

Camping just outside Bethlehem, only a few of the visitors could speak Aramaic or Hebrew. It took a while to find out that they had followed an astronomical appearance from two years before - it had taken them that long to research and prepare for the months long journey from the Euphrates valley via Haran and Dammasek [Dammascus] to the sweltering Jordan valley and the steep climb up to Jerusalem; the place they had expected would be their final destination.

The next morning, Miriam was disturbed at her chores by a small crowd of children at her door. "They're coming here - they're coming to visit you!"    She hardly had time to straighten her clothes when the door was darkened and the whole group of sages and "wise men" stood there - looking almost more richly dressed than the day they had arrived. Calling frantically for Yosef to come, she bowed low before these magnificent lords and grabbed her son to stop him running at them.

As Yosef entered the room, he gaped in astonishment as, one by one, the rich and stately men knelt in the dust of their cramped living quarters - not before her, but before her son, who stood solemnly beside her clutching her skirts with one little hand, watching almost knowingly as the men laid gifts before him.

And what gifts! Miriam and her husband soon found themselves gazing at a small fortune - no, to them a huge one -in gold, frankincense, myrrh and other costly and sweet-smelling substances. One of the men was Chazal [3], a Torah sage from the Jewish community in Babylon. He explained their story to the poor and humble couple who had been chosen to bring the Messiah into the world; the Messiah the visitors had come to worship and honour with their gifts.

Two days later, the huge camel train had mysteriously disappeared in the night; not, it seemed, back through Jerusalem but on another route to take the sages East. That night Miriam was rudely awakened by a frightened and incoherent Yosef. An angel (hadn't seen one of them for a while!) had told him to leave Bethlehem - and leave NOW, in the middle of the night! A terrible event was rushing towards them with the sole aim of destroying their son.

Taking one of the family's donkeys they had hurriedly packed Yosef's tools, some clothes and food and their sleepy son (not forgetting the sages' gifts) and left Bethlehem as the early sun began to colour the Eastern sky beyond the Salt Sea. By midday they were far enough away that they never heard the shouts of soldiers, the screams of mothers, the cries of fathers and the suddenly truncated wailing of every baby under the age of two; slaughtered by a jealous king in his attempt to ensure no-one would be obeyed or worshipped in Israel except him. [Matthew 2:16]  

Another attempt to thwart The Plan had failed.    

Footnotes :

[1] It's generally accepted that the shepherds were probably employed by the Temple to breed perfect lambs for sacrifices. As such, they were at the bottom of the social scale as they were unable to keep themselves ritually pure because of their occupation. Luke's inclusion of them is in line with his emphasis on God revealing Himself to the poor and humble of the world (Mary included). I have assumed the shepherds lived in or around Bethlehem, making them well-known (if smelly) figures in the town.     

[2] Think! Three lonely men on camels, silhouetted against a starry sky, don?t travel from Babylon to Jerusalem by themselves!

[3] "Chazal" is not a personal name but a general phrase used to encompass all Torah sages over hundreds of years. I have included a Torah sage on the basis that non-Jewish astrologers, sorcerers or "wise men" would not have been able to narrow the search for a new king to Bethlehem, even if the star had given them sufficiently accurate guidance to point them towards Israel.