Baby Target of Political Assassination Threat

“Get up! Flee to Egypt with the child and his mother,” the angel said. “Stay there until I tell you to return, because Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”
Raffaello Sorbi Flucht nach Ägypten 1904
That night Joseph left for Egypt with the child and Mary, his mother, and they stayed there until Herod’s death.

from the gospel of Matthew, New Living Translation

What Child Is This?

A baby is born into poverty, in a land under harsh military occupation. A baby who becomes a refugee before he can even walk, as his young parents flee the bloody crackdown of a dictator intent on crushing any dissent to his rule.

Horn of AfricaA dissident whose life is in constant threat when he returns to the land of his birth, both from the controlling powers and those who don’t wish to antagonize them. A controversial figure initially welcomed by a society which then turns and scapegoats him as soon as the prevailing mood changes.

Any of this sound familiar? Refugees, dictatorships, military actions against civilians – it’s all so very 21st century, isn’t it? But it’s also 1st century, because this is the life of Jesus Christ.

God is not, as some have thought him, far-off, uncaring, and content to leave us to suffer through life as best we may. (Though I am tempted to think that some of us have created God in our own image, to think him so.) The meaning of Christmas is God with us – with us in the pain, the poverty, the danger, all of it. God with us.

My best hope, wish and prayer for you is that God will be with you this year – in all of it.

To Give or To Receive…

Giving a gift
…that is the question. No, really: that is the question this week. One of Jesus’ more famous sayings is “It is more blessed to give than to receive” – but which do you prefer?