Old stories, new insights

Have you ever read a story that you've heard a million times but this time for some reason something totally new pops out that you've never noticed.

Well, that happened to me this week. I started listening to a dramatized reading of the New Testament on my way to work, side note... there's nothing like hearing Morgan Freemen quote God. Well, between the sheep bahhhing (or however you spell their noise) and the noise of the crowd I noticed something in the story of the three wise men I've never thought about.

They were considered pagans compared to the Jewish audience reading the account of Matthew, but when they had a vision, a vision that Christian's might say was from God, they listened and then obeyed it. They were suppose to return to the ruling king of the land and inform him of Baby Jesus' where abouts but the vision instructed them to go a different route, to disobey the king, and to sneak out. Not a smart move to tick off a king when you're a foreigner in his land, this took some serious guts on their part.

The king soon realized theses three guys had skipped town and takes a less delicate approach to removing the so called "king of the Jews" they had come to visit. He simply ordered the death of all the Baby boys in the land.

It may be because the recording I was listening to had screams and dramatization at this point, or because I had just left my own 6 month old son at home, but the part of the King killing the baby boys slapped me in the face.

These three guys obeyed God and because of that baby boys were killed.

I've heard people say doing what's right is tough, but this is nonsense.

Is doing what's right instigating the massacre of innocent lives? Is doing what's right abandoning the helpless? Is doing what's right instigating trouble?

Right and wrong are only determined by the point of view from which you're looking. From the storyline in which you're using to make sense of the moments that string together around you to be called life.

When we read the story of these baby boys from a limited view of the mothers watching them die, this is awful, and, well... a list of other words I can't bring my self to process as I think of this being my own son.  These murders are simply incomprehensible.

But if we can force ourselves to read not only this story, but also our lives, from the larger story of God the incomprehensible action against these boys are caught in the redemptive recusing of not only the brothers and sisters of these boys, but of their parents and neighbors and of the generations to come... and of the guards who carried out such deeds.

The actions done to these boys is unspeakable, but the wise man allowed it to happen so that the baby they visited would one day become a man, a man who could look at the face of evil, the evil that stirred the heart of a king to kill sons not yet walking, and defeat that evil. To say your reign of terror has been marked with an end date. And from this time on people will choose to live against such evil and one day, one blessed and hopeful day, that baby who was spared, grew up, and defeated evil will return and wipe away all the tears, and put all the wrongs right.

So today as I think of the wrongs around me, of the wrongs that shouldn't happen, of the 8th graders who commit suicide, of the oppression and injustice that still live in the world today I squeeze the hands of the mothers of the babies killed in the story, and of the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers who through out history who have watched evil move and joining hands with all of history I look forward to the day that all wrongs are made right and every tear is wiped, and every incomprehensible is no more and when obedience to good seals the tomb to disobedient evil.

To that day I look, come Lord Jesus Come.