The Journey To Bethlehem chords by Penny Wilcock

SimplifiedG · Dm · Em · Bm · C …

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Intro 1
G 
Dm 
Em 
Bm 
Em 
C 
B 
Em 
Bm 
C 
G 
C 
Em 
Bm 
Em 

Verse 1
Em 
When I was little,
we children always used to have a rest in the afternoon.
We had to go and lie down quietly on our beds,
C 
and sometimes I used to feel very
Em 
wakey and alive
and not like going to sleep at all.
C 
Em 
And then I would say to our mother,
Mummy,
I don't want to go to sleep,
I can't go to sleep.
And when I said that, she would say to me,
C 
Em 
Then just lie down quietly,
C 
a rest will do as much good as a sleep.
Em 
But it's hard to lie down quietly
when you don't feel like going to sleep,
C 
isn't it? So for the days that
I felt wide awake
Em 
when rest time came,
our mother kept a box of cards.
Some of them had been birthday cards,
C 
some were postcards
that came from holiday places,
Em 
and some were Christmas cards.
And if I didn't feel sleepy,
our mother said I could pick out
a card to look at
to help me lie down quietly in my rest
time. Bethlehem.
One of my favourite
cards had a picture
called The Journey to Bethlehem.
C 
I was a very little girl then,
too small to understand the writing,
but I asked our mother what the words
Em 
said.
They were long words written down.
C 
So she read the words to me,
The Journey to Bethlehem,
and she said,
Now you lie down quietly
and look at the picture for a while,
and maybe you'll have
a little sleep as well.
And she went out of my bedroom
Em 
C 
and left the door a little bit open
Em 
so I wouldn't  feel lonely or afraid,
C 
and I could hear
her walking down the stairs
Em 
and then going into the kitchen
C 
and doing cooking things down there,
with tins and a whisk and what not.
Em 
I knew I couldn't possibly go to sleep
because I didn't feel sleepy,
C 
but I snuggled under
the soft blue blanket
Em 
on the top of my bed,
C 
and I sucked my thumb
because that was what I always
did
Em 
when I went to bed.
And I held the card in my other hand,
and I looked at the card very
C 
carefully for a long time.
Em 
C 
The picture showed a man walking along,
close beside a donkey.
Em 
He  was leading the donkey by a short strap,
but the donkey wasn't giving him any trouble,
C 
tossing its head or trying to get
away.
It just walked quietly beside him
as if it liked things to be that way.
It looked like a friendly sort of a donkey,
with grey -brown fur
and big dark eyes
Em 
that had the most enormous eyelashes.
C 
An d the donkey had long furry
ears.
Em 
It was holding them forward
C 
in an interested sort of a way.
Can you imagine my donkey's
nice face?"
Em 
The donkey and the man walked along,
and the man had a beard and hair
C 
that curled down to his shoulders.
And he had a bag over his shoulder,
Em 
a brown bag, like a sack is.
In one hand he had the
donkey's leading strap,
C 
and in the other  he carried a tall stick,
Em 
a staff they call it,
useful when your path
is hilly and rough.
On his feet he had sandals,
and he wore a robe that went all the way
down to his ankles,
tied round the waist, but not tightly,
C 
with something that
Em 
looked like a big thick string.
C 
The robe reminded  me a bit of a dressing gown,
striped orange and brown,
not bright orange, you know, but a soft,
quiet sort of orange,
and with the stripes
it was hard to see where the
orange stopped
and the brown began—sort
of blurry stripes.
Em 
This robe he wore looked comfy.
C 
It was dusty,
Em 
too, because they'd been walking a long way.
You could see in the picture,
C 
the track they'd walked coming winding all the way through hills and fields,
dusty and brown
with some bushes here and there,
Em 
and thistles and things,
but not many trees.
And far away in the distance,
where the hills became blue
C 
and purply because they were so far away,
you could just see the shape of a
little huddle of houses,
Em 
the town they'd walked from,
which was their home.
I knew the name of this town,
because I'd asked my mother.
C 
Em 
It had a lovely name.
C 
The town they came from
Em 
was called Nazareth.
C 
Em 
I  liked to hold the card up close and
peer at the purply -blue town,
C 
their home so far away,
Em 
and try and make out
C 
Em 
the shapes of the houses,
and guess which one was their home,
and I'd whisper the name to myself,
Nazareth.
But if you are imagining the picture,
you mustn't think the
man with the stripy robe
and the donkey were the only people in it.
C 
No, because someone
Em 
was riding that donkey,
a lady in a blue dress,
with a kind and pretty face.
C 
I looked closely at that lady,
and I thought I would like to know her,
because she looked
so patient and so kind,
but I felt a bit sorry for her, too,
because as well as looking like a nice person,
she did look so tired.
She looked as though she could hardly sit
up straight any more.
She was even leaning a bit
on the man who was leading the donkey,
although I expect she did her best not to,
because that must
have been a bit awkward for him.
Now, I know why this lady felt so tired.
Em 
C 
Because our mother explained all about
this picture to me.
And the secret of it all was in the lady's
tummy.
Because this lady had the biggest tummy
you ever saw.
Em 
And the reason was,
C 
she was going to have a baby
any time now.
And I knew who this baby was going to be,
Em 
and all about who the stripy man
and the lovely lady in
the blue dress were.
This was Joseph,
C 
Em 
walking by the donkey,
C 
taking care of Mary riding beside
him.
And curled up safe and warm in her tummy,
was the baby Jesus,
waiting to be born
at the stable in Bethlehem.
Em 
And if the look on Mary's face
and the bigness of her tummy
were anything to go by,
C 
the waiting had gone
on quite long enough.
C 
But anyway, you could tell the baby Je
sus was going to be born any minute now
because the picture was called
The Journey to Bethlehem.
And you know, and I know,
that was where Jesus was born.
In a stable. With a star.
And because it was evening in the picture,
you could just see the stars
beginning to shine
and one of them looked especially
bright.
I haven't told you about Joseph's face,
have I? way,
apart from he had a beard.
He had a nice face,
brown eyes and a big nose.
He wasn't smiling in the picture,
but he looked as
though he might smile.
He looked as though he was being careful,
thinking about taking care of the donkey and Mary,
and making sure not to trip on the stones along the path,
and there were some big ones,
so you had to mind out.
And he had the gentlest face,
Joseph,
the gentlest face I ever saw.
And I would fall asleep looking at that face.
I suppose Jesus did sometimes as well.