[Note. This fictional six-minute read may best be savored while relaxing with a steaming cup of hot tea or cool glass of eggnog. Regardless, Merry Christmas to you and yours.]]
Gaspar sat atop the moving beast, his body swaying in the rolling gait. Memories stirred.
He savored such occasions as this when he could, without interruption, review his past, his station in life, and his good fortune.
Gaspar knew that certain inner qualities had seemed to elude him. Like humility. He found himself growing uneasy these days with his self-congratulatory reflections. But only slightly.
‘Of Course it was I”, he mused, “I, who first took serious note of the unique light beam in the western sky. And didn’t I, Gaspar, in my research, uncover the mystery-promises?’
The promises he reflected on were oral references of ancient Hebrew parchments – oracles predicting a king’s birth. A child-king promised to the Hebrew peoples. . . perhaps even to the larger world!
‘Of Course, it was I.’
His shoulders lowered and he sighed, still hesitant to credit others who were equally vital to the venture onto which they had embarked. At this point they were months in.
The star’s brightness radiated almost directly overhead now. Gaspar squirmed atop the saddle. A curious discomfort of spirit had been welling within. The saddled shifted again.
The star’s beam – brighter than he had yet observed it – converged, it seemed, with another kind of light.
Gaspar felt a stab of conscience unlike any he had felt before. The regal traveler muffled a cry.
“Impure! Impure am I – unworthy and defiled! I have regarded my brothers with contempt!”
His remorse persisted, conviction’s light piercing his inmost self. “Unworthy.”
His brow furrowed, “Yet before whose face I am unworthy I know not. This I do know, I dare not proceed to the place of the king-child, not with this, this inner stain.”
He mused further within himself, ‘Who is this one really, this child? Is it he himself who moves upon me so – here beneath the night sky, even before I behold his face?’
He drew his camel back and brought a scarf about his face.
At his command the camel lowered its frame to the sandy earth. Dismounting it, Gaspar went to his knees. I must find mercy. . . mercy!
“Oh exalted being”, he whispered, his eyes turned to the heavens, “Oh great governor of constellations. . . mercy!”
In this moment he sensed a thing wholly new to any experience he had known. Sitting motionless, the learned star-chaser felt a warming presence – bathing him, it seemed. Wave on purifying wave. Burning, cleansing. . . Comforting. Wave on wave.
Gaspard did not measure how long he lingered before moving to rise. His right foot pressed beneath him so long had lost feeling. Extending one hand upward, he grasped a low-hanging branch of a nearby tree. A picture slowly took form in Gaspar’s mind as he rose, balancing himself on the steadier foot.
‘Yes, yes, I am seeing it now.” His grip tightened about the branch. “This is who I am, I am a man not able, not of my own might, to properly stand. I am out-of-balance, weak and in great need of support – much as this tree limb supplies aid for my body now.’ The thought lingered.
He sensed within him the stirring of a fresh, even joyful, resolve. A whispered pledge began to form – strong, tender. His jaw anchored in place even as tears of relief moistened his eyelids,
‘From this hour I shall walk in the company of others. . . Yes, in the company of my brothers – Melchior and Balthazar! Indeed, and all others about me. All unto whom I shall henceforth render true service. And to my household, my family. Yes, we shall be – each to the other – a supporting limb. As a branch.’ Gaspard lifted his gaze skyward, his voice fading to a whisper, ‘May we find strength.’
Suddenly, excited voices came, spirited cries, from a place further ahead.
Each step brought him nearer, discerning more clearly the shouts – jubilant, adoring, calls voiced in varied tongues – Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian, Arabian. The calls rang in proclamation, shouting sacred homage to a special personage, obviously near at hand.
The child-king!
A Hebrew voice bearing a trace of Persian accent rose strong amidst the others. Distinct, jubilant.
Cupping a weathered palm to his ear, Gaspar savored the exclamations.
“All worship to him”, the shouts went up, “to the Christ-child, the Messiah!”
More titles followed, “to the King! The Morning star . . .
“the branch!”
Gaspar’s heart leapt, ‘the Branch?’
He swallowed. A breeze touched his face, stirring his graying beard. Turning briefly, he glanced to the tree and its still-extended limb, now back of him and beyond reach.
Peering once again to the path ahead the sage took in the lighted glow of a modest dwelling. A tender and purest kind of warmth enveloped him,
“Soon I shall offer up my gift of myrrh to this, this regal young one – my Lord.”
Gaspar gave a tug to his animal’s halter. “Come, camel. Do you see the light of the dwelling there, camel? It is there at that place we shall meet a child. .
“The King-child. The Branch.” *
©2022 Jerry Lout *Isaiah 11:1
