Jeremiah 31.15 Thus says the Lord,
“A voice is heard in Ramah,
Lamentation and bitter weeping.
Rachel is weeping for her children;
She refuses to be comforted for her children,
Because they are no more.
(NASB)
Not long after Jesus was born
in Bethlehem, wise men from the east (the area around modern Iraq) came to seek
Him because they knew something big had happened: they came seeking the King of
the world. They stopped off in Jerusalem and paid their respects to Herod the
king but they wanted to know where to find the King of the Jews. Herod thought
this was odd because he was the king of the Jews but he played along. So the
entourage of wise men left his presence and went and found Jesus in the region
of Judeah and paid homage to Him there. They then left and went back to their
country.
King Herod was enraged. He
gathered his police force and sent them into the region around Bethlehem and
slaughtered all the male children 2 years old and younger: hence the verse from
Jeremiah: “Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her
children, because they are no more.” Nobody
is going to be king but me.
Christmas is not always such a
happy time. Part of the Christmas story is very sad and tragic indeed: a
massacre of innocent children because of a petty and insecure tyrant wasn’t
going to give any competition any chance. The Christmas story includes the
slaughter of innocents. The slaughter of innocents begs the question: God, where are You? Christmas is not
immune to tragedy.
It’s important that we remember
this because Jesus came to give us hope that through Him, tragedy will lose its
grip on the rest of us. Jesus survived the slaughter but later went to the
cross for our sakes, making a way for us to have eternal relationship with God.
The cross was a slaughter of the Innocent.
Yesterday (December 11), in a
crowded shopping mall in Clackamas, Oregon, a gunman killed two people and
seriously wounded a third before turning the gun on himself and committing
suicide. The families of those killed and the family of the gunman are not happy this Christmas. Instead of shopping for holiday gifts, they’ll be making
funeral arrangements. This Christmas for them will be a stark and dark time for
them this year, and for the rest of their lives. Unless…
Unless they somehow can give
over the tragedy of what happened to them and their loved ones by giving it
over to God who watched it all happen; and who sent His Son two thousand years
ago to save us from such tragedy and to help us to see that the end here, is
not necessarily the end of all things. God can sort out death – it’s His
job. We, however, are called to give ourselves over to Him that we may trust
and hope that if anyone can make sense of the senselessness of life, it’s Him and
not us.
It doesn’t bring the dead back
but it helps the healing process. It doesn’t bring the dead back but it helps
us say: God, You’re in charge and by staying with You I’ll ultimately go to be
with You where this kind of thing can never, ever happen again. I trust You in
the meantime.
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