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Beyond deathMonday, January 5, 2009
Matthew 2:13-16 So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where they stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."
When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.
God's ways are his business, not mine. As a blogger named "starkman" put it, "That the Son of the Lord God should need to escape from the wrath of a human seems preposterous. God controlled a star a few verses ago and now He needs to escape from a man!"* Jesus' destiny involved the deaths of many innocent children. Why? When he became an adult, his sensitivity to the pain and despair of his brothers and sisters led him to spend hour after hour touching them with healing, releasing them from demons and even raising them from the dead. But more importantly Jesus showed them God's love, which carries us far beyond physical pain and death. Everyone Jesus healed eventually died anyway. But they had known the touch of God. They could take that touch through death into eternity. Jesus came not to end death so much as to conquer it, to make it nothing more than a transition into the rest of life. Always open me, Lord, to what you have given me forever. Your love, your love, your love. * http://cupofgrace.wordpress.com/2007/10/07/the-escape-to-egypt-matthew-213-23/ |
Joseph wasted no time. There was an immediacy about this dream, and he woke up Mary and she took Jesus and they were gone. Perhaps they heard the hoofbeats of the oncoming soldiers. Probably they heard the wailing of their neighbors as the soldiers rousted them out of bed and began killing the children. Certainly they were afraid.