Luke 19:28-40
My dad used to tell a story. It was a story from when he was very young. He grew up in a small town north of where I was raised. For a good part of his life, he worked with a man who was in the hotel business. It was good work. The hours were weird, but he had a nice place to sleep. Things were good and quiet (not like here).
That is, he told me, until one night. Everyone had already bedded down. It had been a busy day, just like the ones before. There were more people around than usual, which meant there was more work to be done. It had taken him a while to fall asleep. And when he had, it wasn’t long before something work him up. People, he said, were in the barn.
One of them, the hotel man’s wife, he knew. But the two other people he didn’t know. They had a donkey with them who crowded in the stall near my dad and promptly fell asleep. The woman who was with the strange man who’d just come in didn’t seem to be feeling well. The hotel man’s wife gave a lot of orders to people who ran around while she worked to make the woman comfortable. Before long, the woman started to scream. It was unsettling. At first my dad wanted to hide and cover his ears because the noise scared him, but he kept watching and soon realized that the woman was giving birth. He’d never seen another creature being born before. He couldn’t take his eyes away.
Seeing a human baby being born wasn’t the biggest excitement of the night, however. A bunch of sheep showed up later on that night, about the time my dad had almost fallen asleep again. They came with their people who all seemed very excited over this birth. He didn’t know what happened to the people and their baby, he said, because they didn’t stay for very long.
I thought about this story today, though I don’t know why. Maybe it was the commotion in the city like when he was little. Maybe it was being so close to people, though no one, today, had a baby. Even so, everyone seemed very excited today.
I’ve never carried anyone on my back before. I was a little afraid when this man approached me. But, it’s strange, his burden wasn’t as heavy as I thought it would be. It was actually easier than the work I usually do.
I’m not sure who he was or where he went to after we rode into the city. He seemed like a nice man. He treated me very kindly. He even thanked me after he climbed off my back. He told me I did well.
And, he said he’d see me again.
Jesus, as we enter this week in which we remember your last hours and death, help us as we follow you to remember that you can bear our burdens. Help us, whether we need it or not, to allow others to bear our burdens as we bear theirs.