Years ago, I heard a Paul Harvey story of this theme. I found this narrative in several newsgroups online and copied it to my blog. It appears Robert Schuller first gave this point of view.
If you are the original source for this narrative, please understand that I don't profit from its sharing.
The Bethlehem innkeeper has been getting a bum rap.
Christmas seasons, and sometimes in between, pulpits are aflame with righteous wrath over the story of Jesus being born in a manger.
The very idea that men had waited through 20 centuries of darkness for the long-sought light 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---yet the innkeeper did not even reserve a room.
Hold the phone! 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 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, thieves, heavy drinkers and 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 screams of a teen-age mother delivering her first child would have been overheard in other rooms.
In the stable was privacy, where none would overhear her labor. No leering eyes would peer upon a woman giving birth. The stable was safe, 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 the warm air warmed the stable.
What might Joseph have done to protect his tax money against the thieves and ruffians in the inn?
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, quiet, soft, warm, perfect place.
And besides, the much maligned innkeeper of Bethlehem had given the best that he had ---and that is all that is asked for of any of us.
