Mary’s Comfy-Cart

Joseph knows the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem is more than seventy miles and will take four days. He thinks to himself, “I’m a carpenter. What kind of carpenter will have his wife, almost ready to have a child, balance on the back of a donkey for more than seventy miles?” Joseph decides to make her a cart to ride in. . . . Joseph is a good carpenter, but he does not make wheels. He buys a sturdy cart that was used to carry hay or dry wood for home fires. It has a very solid floor and good wheels. He builds a sturdy box on this cart, with the back leaning just enough to make Mary comfortable. At the front, he makes open bins to hold a jug of water, a sack of grain for the donkey, and something to eat along the way. Mary has collected several big cushions to give her a nice “nest” in the cart, so she won’t feel the bumps on the road. . . . The next day, one of Joseph’s relatives told him there was room for him, Mary, and newborn Jesus in a house up the street. Joseph gathered his little family and settled them in that house. God’s holy family can stay in that house until Mary and baby Jesus are able to make the trip back to Nazareth. One day, three men from the east find them in the house and tell how a bright light in the sky led them through the mountains, to Jerusalem, then to Bethlehem, and then to the exact house. “We think it was an angel,” they say. “At first, we thought it was a star, but no star could lead us in different directions and then to this house.” These three men, called Magi, have come with gifts of gold, frankincense , and myrrh.