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“Is it… soon?” He shrugged his shoulders. “The girl is with child?” He nodded vigorously. And… she was in a bad way.” My Amos, five children, and he still can’t bring himself to speak frankly about the facts of life. He was just the man I married, just for a moment. And all pretense left his face, all false bravado.
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“What-did they offer you some exorbitant amount of money? Did they give you a denarius?”Īmos shook his head. I was suddenly eager to hear what could possibly have persuaded him to open our stable to travelers. Maybe Amos was a good business man after all.
#The innkeepers wife full#
“What in the world are you telling me? The busiest night of our year, the we are full to overflowing, and you get it into your mind to put someone up with the cows and the goats?” Then I thought a moment. That look of almost having gotten away with something. I see that very same look on our children sometimes. “Just a minute, husband,” I stopped him, and he turned around to face me again. See that they have a decent meal tonight.” And he turned on his heel and walked away. I had so many things to do!Īmos straightened himself up and said, “We have taken in some additional guests. I had no time for some great complication that probably wouldn’t matter in the end. I’m sure my face was flushed, which also happens when I get angry. That look he gets when he has to tell me something he knows I’m not going to like.
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I remember I was working in the kitchen that night, trying to provide a decent meal for about thirty hungry souls when in walks Amos, with that look on his face. Or maybe our people are exploding in number! Who knows? But day in and day out for two weeks, Amos and I were forced to say, “No, I’m sorry, we are full-try Jacob and Naomi down the street.” A lot of families having squabbles that year, I suppose. So the town was filled to overflowing, and for the first time ever we had to turn away traveler after traveler. The children work with their father and me in the inn, they tend our little garden and see to the livestock. We have five, thanks be to God, five who have lived beyond the age of two, at any rate. So, that’s where we come in! Some poor travelers come all the way from Bethany or Jerusalem or even, God help them, some backwater like Cana or Nazareth-and who puts them up for the night or the week or however long it takes the Romans to count them on their little beads? We do! Amos Ben Joseph! And wife. Let’s be realists here, shall we? It happens all the time. But occasionally, you have a family that’s not-well, let’s say, they’re not so friendly with one another. Now, most travelers, when they come to their ancestral city, well, of course, they stay with family. I had never seen it so filled with travelers. It’s like those guests we had, in the time of that last census. Maybe he feels he has something to prove. Maybe that’s why Amos has such an issue with it. And the tribe of Benjamin-let’s just say, we don’t have quite the reputation for hospitality of our brother tribes. We’re of a different tribe, the tribe of Benjamin. It’s a great homecoming: everyone of the house and lineage of David, which is to say, the tribe of Judah, comes home to Bethlehem. But every so often, when the Roman bigwigs get it into their minds that they want a count of us, just to see how much trouble we’ll be, or where they need to send their regiments and legions, Bethlehem swells to be a city of many, many more than that. Oh, it’s not so “great.” Just a thousand souls or so. I am Rachel, and my husband and I are innkeepers in Bethlehem, the great City of David. It’s a business! Sometimes you have to shake that man to remind him: we’re not doing this for our health. What else would it be about? Well, I’ll tell you what else it would be about: it’s all about the business. “It’s all about the hospitality,” he says, my husband, Amos.