Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, shared a story about the famous Rabbi the Baal Shem Tov, who was kind of a Jewish version of Archbishop Fulton Sheen:

One day a woman went to her rabbi and said, “Rabbi, I am getting older, and I am barren. My husband and I cannot have a child. Is there anything you could suggest, perhaps a blessing, or something I could do?” Her rabbi asked her, “Can I tell you a story?”

“There was once a woman in Lithuania who could not conceive a child and she heard that the famous Rabbi the Baal Shem Tov was speaking at the Synagogue in the next village, so she hurried off to the next village to see him. When she got there, she found that he had left the previous day for another village. She set off for that village, but when she got there, he had just left. So she travelled on to the next village, and again he had just left. Eventually, at the seventh village, she caught up with him. ‘Rabbi,’ she said, ‘I am getting older, and I am barren. My husband and I cannot have a child. Is there anything you could suggest, perhaps a blessing, or something I could do?’ Rabbi the Baal Shem asked her, ‘Do you have any treasure that you could offer to God?’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘My husband is just a poor book binder and we do not have much, but I do have one fine thing, a katinka my mother gave me. I could offer that?’

‘That will be fine,’ said Rabbi the Baal Shem.

She hurried back to her village to fetch her katinka, a finely embroidered shawl that she had carefully stowed away, then she began her trek, going from village to village to village, until she caught up again with Rabbi the Baal Shem. She presented him with her katinka. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and he hung the katinka on the synagogue wall.

“She went home and nine months later I was born. This is the story of my mother,” the Rabbi said.

“Oh!” said the woman excitedly. “I also have a katinka that I would gladly donate.”

“No, that won’t work,” said the Rabbi. “You have already heard the story, but my mother had not.”

Could it be the case that we cannot be fruitful in life by just trying to live other people’s stories? In this story, the woman was ‘given’ a story, but she did not yet ‘have’ her own story. For the woman to try and use an exact replica of the Rabbi’s mother’s story as her own would not work, she needed to take whatever risks were required in order to acquire her own original one.

So, what part do other people’s stories play in our life? Can they show us where courage and faith are viable options? Can they inspire us?

In some ways, the Bible is a collection of stories of ‘others’. Sarah, Hannah, Ruth, Mary, Elizabeth, Joseph, David, Jesus. Can the notion of the ‘inspiration of scripture’ take on a new meaning in this context?

If we look from the circumstances of the Rabbi’s birth to the birth of Jesus, we have even more to ponder. As we journey through the different phases of our life and arrive at the beginning of the next chapter of our own story, finding ourselves either in a condition of barrenness (like Elizabeth) or one of virginity (like Mary), will we have the courage and faith to offer up the katinka of our life and say to the Holy Spirit: “Let it be done unto me according to your word.”