A friend asked me if I had ever read the fable about the Fourth Wiseman. While I have listened, and wept, to Amahl and the Night Visitors,  choked up over the book The Three Trees, sobbed over The Miracle of Jonathan Toomey, ached over The Little Troll, and been stirred deeply by Papa Panov's Special Day, I had never heard this one. He gave me the short version, but even without the details, he could barely speak. Like the time he was reading it to children, and he had to hand the book over to one of them to finish.  

The fourth wise man carries three costly jewels to offer to the newborn King: a blue sapphire, a red ruby and a shining pearl. Yet while journeying to find the Messiah, the wise man happens upon people who need help. A fevered man lying by the road, a mother whose baby will be killed by Roman soldiers, and a young girl being sold as a slave all interrupt his pilgrimage. In what feels like a distraction he sacrifices his jewels to save others. Gifts that were meant for God were spent on passing strangers. 

Maybe we aspire to have our acts of altruism pointed at the Star in the east. Yet it is far away. So God makes the task easier for us, by plunking mortals in our path who hurt, and bleed, and hunger. 

There comes a time when the Christmas story is no longer about people who lived a long time ago, in a country I have never set foot in. It is about how I am treating the other weary and marred travelers who share the road.