Paul Harvey: The Bethlehem Innkeeper

The Bethlehem Innkeeper has been getting a bum rap.
Christmas seasons, and sometimes in between, pulpits are aflame with righteous wrath over the Jesus-born-in-a-manger story. The very idea that men had waited through 20 centuries of darkness and the long-sought light had to enter the world through the window of a stable. Prophets of the Old Testament had told them where to expect the baby and approximately when. And yet, the innkeeper did not even reserve a room.
Well, now, let's hold the phone here. The innkeeper has been getting a bum rap! If Robert Schuller was not the first to remind us, he was certainly the most eloquent, when once upon a Christmas time he re-recited the Bethlehem story, and he protested that the innkeeper had become the victim of cheap shots by preachers, teachers, and pageant writers. The Bible does not accuse the innkeeper. Joseph did not complain to the innkeeper. Mary did not complain.
Actually, the stable was a cave in a hillside where cattle lived. It had many advantages over a room at the inn. The inn of Bethlehem was no Marriott hotel. It was a place where the masses collected: ruffians and thieves and heavy drinkers - rowdy men. In the inn, there would have been no soft straw bed; Mary would have had to lie on a hard floor. The inn was jam-packed at tax-paying time. The groans and natural screens of a teenage mother delivering her first child would have been overheard in other rooms.
In the stable was privacy, where nobody would overhear her labor. No leering eyes would peer upon a woman giving birth. The stable was safe and secure and warmer than the inn. The inn was without heat. No furnaces. No more than one lobby fireplace. But the wide nostrils of cattle exhaling steam, breathing in the cold air and breathing out warm air, warmed the stable.
What might Joseph have done to protect his tax money against the thieves and ruffians in the inn? Yet, in the safety of the stable there was no fear of a knife at one’s throat in the night.
So, God and the innkeeper cooperated to provide a perfect place for Jesus to be born - a safe place, a quiet, soft, warm, comparatively comfortable, perfect place.
And besides, the much maligned innkeeper of Bethlehem had given the best that he had. And isn't that is all that is asked of any of us?
Paul Harvey