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The Greatest Escape
It Could Have Happened
This Way
By Steve Stephens
A
group of children and church leaders in contemporary times prepare
for their church's annual Christmas pageant. The children are
asked to help in writing a play for the pageant. Assisted by their
church choir director, they are to create a fictional rendition
of the birth of Jesus, and the Holy Family's subsequent flight
to Egypt from Bethlehem. The Holy Family must escape Bethlehem
because King Herod has ordered the massacre of all male children
under the age of two. Ingeniously, the children help create a
fictional daughter for King Herod, Cleangela, and it is she who
helps the Holy family escape.
The
story opens in King Herod's palace with the arrival of the Three
Wise Men from the Far East. They excitedly tell King Herod and
his daughter, Cleangela, that they have been following a star
from the heavens that would lead them to the birth of a newborn
King of the Jews. This journey has led them to Bethlehem. Herod
counsels the Wise Men to go and find the King and report their
findings back to him so that he, too, might go and worship the
newborn. But as soon as the wise men leave, Herod, calls for Cleangela
and sends her on an espionage mission to Bethlehem to find, for
herself, the whereabouts of this mysterious new King, so that
he might be eliminated.
Warned
by an Angel, the Wise Men return to their homes via another route,
without reporting their findings as per Herod's request. Enraged
and now obsessed with the idea of destroying this new King, Herod
makes plans to kill all males under two years of age, thereby
eliminating all vestiges of this threat to his royal monarchy.
When
Cleangela arrives in Bethlehem, like Jesus and His family earlier,
she found no rooms for spending the night, and was forced to sleep
out on the hillside. Thus, she is there when the Holy Angels visit
the Shepherds and announce the birth of Jesus Christ. She hears
the Angel, and after the message is given, the Angel turns to
Cleangela and gets her commitment to help the Christ Child escape
from the cruelty of her father.
Indeed,
it is her encounters with God's Angels that save the Holy Family.
Knowing that her father's soldiers were everywhere, Cleangela
realizes that a mere carpenter and a peasant mother could never
hope to affect an escape. So Cleangela devises a brilliant plan
of escape to Egypt for the Holy Family. After several very narrow
escapes, manipulated behind the scene by Princess Cleangela, the
Family arrives in Egypt where the Princess has made arrangements
for Joseph to have a house and a job. Shortly thereafter, King
Herod dies, and the Holy Family returns to their native land and
settles in northern Israel.
Years
later, as Joseph and his 10-year-old son, Jesus, are working one
day, building a house, a chilling foreshadowing of the brutal
death of Jesus appears. Wooden planks being used for the building
get positioned behind the tired and stretching 10-year-old, forming
what looks like a man on a wooden cross. Mary witnesses this and
is startled because a Holy man, Simeon, had predicted a similar
fate when Jesus was only 9 days old.
Price: $16.00
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