Feast of the Holy Innocents
Can you imagine it? The word begins to circulate through the small city: 'Up - fly, if you can!! The king's soldiers are coming - killing all the children!! Fly!!' And, of course, you couldn't possibly outrun one of those soldiers carrying a small child....
So soon after the joy of Christmas - the horror of the first martyrs for Jesus. They didn't know they were martyrs, but that doesn't diminish their sacrifice at all.
From the moment He was born, the effort was underway to be rid of this Savior - for some, like Herod, it was political; for others, later on, like the Pharisees, it was religious. Whatever the reason, this Incarnation of God, who entered the world for our sake, has always been intolerable to most of us whom he came to save. Even now, we put gigantic, inflatable snowmen on our lawns to negate the real reason for the celebration of Christmas; we hang up greeting cards that proclaim 'Season's Greetings', whatever that means; we do all manner of things in an attempt to 'kill' the Christ child - not literally, but spiritually.
But He lives. Madmen may try to murder him and secularists to render Him irrelevant - but He lives - and He bears the same simple message every Christmas - 'be not afraid - God loves you, far more than you know'.......
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