3 STARTLING START

 Hathach tapped at the city’s back gate. Had he been dreaming? Made a big mistake, maybe? The small door creaked open.

Outside were three camels, saddled, all loaded with small boxes and bags as well as being loosely strung together with slip knots. On one of the camels sat a servant, but the Prince hadn’t come. Well, it wasn’t quite eight hours yet.

Hathach and Melzar stepped through the door and closed it behind them.

“Is this Melzar?” the servant sitting on the camel asked. But it was the voice of the Prince!

“Y-yes,” Hathach replied. “Is that you behind the veil, Prince?”

“Ah. I wanted to be able to ride easy so dressed like this—but you know these nomad veils are musts for sand storms. Here, I brought two extras—maybe you can put them in with your things to use when you need them. And if you’re not expecting anyone else, let’s go as far as we can while it’s dark and cool. As we go, I’ll explain why we’re making this trip.”

Hathach had almost forgotten. Last night, after his visit to see the Prince, he had rushed home and got out the news to Melzar that the three of them would be heading west this morning. What had seemed like a reckless quest until yesterday was actually taking shape right before their eyes today. It seemed this Yahweh God would show Himself to them after all—He was helping them make this trip, not just having a prince give his permission for them to do it, it but he was riding along with them!

“Prince, before you tell us about your reason for making this trip, we must tell you what happened before it,” Hathach said, and told him about their star-gazing findings. “We can’t get away from the notion that a King is going to be born in Judea, and we must be there to witness it.”

“Yahweh sent that Star I saw in the window,” Prince Beorn told Melzar. “Just then, Hathach said he wanted to know about Yahweh God. It was as if Yahweh Himself looked down at me and said, ‘You dare not deny his request to seek Me!’ So I had no choice but to grant you permission, you see?”

“So…you saw a big, bright star that Yahweh sent…” and Melzar closed his lips. Hathach saw Melzar’s face and finished the sentence for him.

“Just exactly what does the star mean?”

“Messiah. The Messiah will be born. I will explain more later.

The wind has picked up, I’m afraid. Can you get those veils, Hathach? I think a sandstorm’s coming.”

Not a moment too soon. No sooner had they dug the hoods out of their things and clapped them on their heads, the trio was lost in a cloud of gravely darkness. Eerie, swirling, “bottomless” darkness. Hathach wondered how people survived sandstorms without veiled hoods. He was glad Prince Beorn had come along on this trip. It would not be the only time on this trip Hathach would have this thought.

That is, Hathach thought it was his trip that he had chosen Melzar for and Prince Beorn had come along; he had no idea this could be a trip planned by Yahweh God for which Beorn, Melzar, and Hathach, had been chosen.

As soon as the winds died down, Hathach and Melzar let out a hugh sigh of relief. Sky! They could see the…what? The prince was telling them to get back on their camels and move to higher ground. Hurry, he said; he would explain later.

“He always ‘explains later.’” Melzar thought, as they went up the side of a slope and reached a clump of palms at the top. They had just come out of a sandstorm, and the sky was beeooti…wait…a cloud was racing across the sky, and it was getting dark fast. The blowing sand of a few moments ago was replaced with roaring downpour of water.

“Take cover! Flash flood!” Prince Beorn’s deep voice sounded small.

The three men and their camels huddled as compact as they could under the trees, watching the water shooting past them. It came crashing through the channel where they had been standing just moments earlier, twisting, lifting boulders, uprooting trees in the way. But after the storm raged awhile, almost as suddenly as it had started, everything stopped. There were swirls of sand everywhere, and the gulley they had been in…well, it was no longer a “channel,” being pretty much filled up with mud and sand.

“I hope everybody likes rabbit stew; that seems to be what Yahweh has provided for dinner tonight.” Prince Beorn’s smiling voice said.

  Rabbit stew? Yahweh provided?

  The Prince came walking down from the top of the hill where they had taken refuge during the storm, pulling something out from behind his back. He was holding two rabbits by their feet!

“My father taught me that after sandstorms, flash floods are very likely. Animals also know this, so the ones in the desert—who happen to be on lower ground when sandstorms hit—usually head for higher ground right afterwards. I never thought I could catch a “cape hare”, but Yahweh has blessed. ‘In the Mount of the LORD it shall be seen,’ (Gen.22:14) I was gathering herbs when I saw a hare, injured in the sandstorm, dying at the foot of a bush. Its mate would not run away, so I caught him too. We can have rabbit stew for dinner tonight, yes? Neither of you are allergic to rabbit, are you?” They shook their heads.

Prince Beorn was full of surprises.