Road to Bethlehem

Words and Music © 1993 by Howard Ashby Kranz

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1. Now that girl was too far gone to be out on the road

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but those big cats in Rome just don’t care

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And that unborn kid’s timing was awkward, but then that’s a fault that quite a few of us share.

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And the father, if he was the father, appeared to be wayworn, but a firm, decent man,.

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trying to gracefully bear with all the forces that put him on the road to Bethlehem.

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2. Not too far behind them arrived three dignitaries,

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dressed finely, with grand eastern trim

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And, although they were rich, they looked almost more haggard

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than that poor start-up family had been.

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When I served one, his eyes lit with deep hidden hope, like he’d known but never thought until                                                                                                                                                  then,

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that the road to his star’s end might turn out to be only the road to Bethlehem.

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Bridge: Now you hear lots of talk that some new world’s arriving

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This old one’s showing cracks like some old misused wineskin.

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And I’ve got a strange sense that this whole world’s surviving

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depends on those mad kings, and that poor family driving the road to Bethlehem..

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3. Now I’m just a servant, but I meet lots of travelers, so I know this world’s bigger than me

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I know some read the future in the stars, or in strange books

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that tell them where the new thing will be.

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And some hear the call of a bright wayside angel, that’ll tell them where hope will begin

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but I just watch people, and I dream and consider, by the road to Bethlehem.