Merry Christmas! On this Wednesday morning the clouds have taken over the sky once more. Have our prayers for a white Christmas been answered? We won't know until the day comes, but this is a good start! Have you ever tried to make Christmas come faster? We all may have tried the childhood trick of going to bed sooner to make the morning arrive more quickly. As I recall, the only result was a longer time laying awake in bed as the anticipation ground your insides to jelly. We can no more make a day arrive sooner than we can cause snow to fall. We can kneel down in prayer and ask, but so far God has left the days at about 24 hours in duration. If Christmas is ten days away, we have 2,956 hours to wait or right there abouts, no matter what the mathematical wizards have to say.
Joseph and Mary probably needed every hour to make the journey from Nazareth and arrive in Bethlehem on the appointed day. The wise men may have enjoyed a bit more leeway in the hours, but probably needed every day to arrive in Bethlehem before Jesus and his family had to flee for Egypt. The arrival of the wise men in Jerusalem started the timer on Herod's actions, and from that point on the wise men had to be quick about their mission to Bethlehem. The small town known as the city of David is not all that far from Jerusalem even by the marching or horseback standards of the 1st Century soldiers. Within a day, Herod could have outfitted a company of soldiers and had them down in Bethlehem creating the mayhem that he became known for in the Bible. Had the wise men gone straight back to Jerusalem as Herod had asked, the small family we have come to love might have had little or no warning before the soldiers were kicking in the door or grabbing the child Jesus in the yard. Yes, Joseph was warned in a dream to flee, but it would have been difficult to have a dream had the soldiers arrived that very day before Joseph had a chance to lay his head on the pillow after a hard day's work.
Instead, we know that God also sent word to the wise men to "wise up" and head out in a different direction, probably with all due speed, since an angry King Herod probably sent another company of mounted soldiers to deal with 'dem disobedient wise fellers. We don't know from the Bible, but the wise men probably wore out their camels heading for home after tricking the local monarch. If you pull a fast one on a king, getting out of his reach is generally thought to be a wise move. Although the massacre of children did take place around Bethlehem, God made sure that His Son was out of harm's way. The prophecy of Rachel weeping over her children did come true, and don't think that God is just going to let that go. Both Herod and those who carried out his orders will answer to God for the murder. We can rest assured of that.
Okay, so the wise men have done their best to hold a camel race back to their homes in the east, Mary and Joseph have escaped with Baby Jesus to Egypt, and Bethlehem is in mourning; what did Herod do next? Did he pat himself on the back, hand out a few royal medals to the soldiers, and assume the job was done? Quite possibly that is true, except for the medals part of course; evil tyrants are notoriously stingy when it comes to rewards. The soldiers may very well have been experiencing the first signs of what we would come to know as post-traumatic stress. I am pretty sure that even in my younger days as a Marine that I would not have been able to slaughter all the male children under the age of two in a community no matter who gave the order in my chain of command. I wonder if Jesus, even as a child, took a moment to pray for those soldiers? Were they a particularly savage group that Herod could send to do his dirty work, or simply a unit on duty that day under threat of crucifixion if they didn't carry out Herod's evil orders? We may never know.
Yours in Christ,
Bucky
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