• Bethlehem Revisited

    Anticipation Abounds!

    Christmas comes early on the farm! Everyone here is knee-deep and prayer-deep in preparing for the thirty-first year of what has become Bethlehem Revisited.  Anticipation fills our hearts as we grandparents along with our children and grandchildren are joined by our large community to worship and work together in bringing this narrative to life once again.  Costumes hang in the barn separated into categories: Angels, market-place, shepherds, guides, children, Marys, Josephs. We have covered the paths with wood chips ready for hundreds of people to trudge up and down the hills.  The tickets that sat in Judd’s office have been distributed to various outlets.  Stock pens for all the animals…

  • Bethlehem Revisited

    The Barn Doors Open (continued from last post)

    The audience quieted as the knock came on the large, rolling barn door.  Joseph was standing in the darkness.  The innkeeper appeared in the large doorway, and Joseph, motioning to a pregnant Mary sitting on a donkey close behind him, began to explain their plight:  “Please, sir, can you give us a room for the night?  My wife is about to deliver, and we have nowhere to stay.” “Can’t you see,” shouted the surly innkeeper as he turned and waved with a sweeping arm across the audience, “we are full tonight.” Ah, we were finally on track.  What was to be an experience of remembrance and worship was beginning to take…

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  • Bethlehem Revisited,  Uncategorized

    Oh Holy Night?

    Where is peace? Where is it hiding, when our world is overwhelmingly disjointed and we feel the need to hold it together?   I was feeling the need to hold things together one December in the early 90’s. Using the land for our Bethlehem story had been a vision  of my heart for years.  It seemed that God had given us land with the story written into its very geography. I was directing the “performance” of our not-named-yet nativity once again. My gifts do not necessarily lie in directing, but I determined to do my best.  Judd, the behind-the scenes’ director was loyally helping me. The majority of our cast that…