Christmas normally involves travel, as families get together - but not this year! Not so many will be driving home for Christmas in 2020 as a consequence of the social restrictions due to the pandemic. Many people were travelling the first Christmas. Pregnant Mary and her husband Joseph walked 90 miles over the hills to reach Bethlehem. Many others like them were travelling because the Roman census required them to return to their ancestral towns to register. Some shepherds travelled a much shorter distance from the fields outside Bethlehem to see a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger, whose birth had been announced to them by angels! The Magi (wise men) came many hundreds of miles, possibly on camels, as they followed a strange star in order to give presents to a new-born king. But the person who travelled the furthest that first Christmas was the baby in the manger. The distance he came isn’t measured in miles, but in the extreme humbling of himself. He c
Run With the Wind: Life on the scrub was rough, but it was all she needed. Then he arrived. He wanted to start over. But this . . . Life changed for the world in a stable one Christmas. Could it also begin for Linney in this stable? Excerpts: 1. Nellie moaned, and Linney pulled. The emerging calf licked her face. “We better hurry, Pa. He just done licked me. Don’t want him thinkin’ I’m his mama.” “You’ll make a good one someday.” “That ain’t happenin’. Why would anyone want to go through this?” Pa looked around Nellie’s bulk. His eyes found Linney’s. “For the likes of you, girl. It’s worth it.” 2. Her eyes shifted to the rider. He appeared to be a few years older’n her. She caught her breath. What was that? His square shoulders and square jaw made him much wider than most Crackers. But there was something else. It made her feel jittery. She must have overeaten, or that new calf licked her too much. Her stomach didn’t normally flop around like a snake hit by a cowman’s whip. Ama