Matthew 2
Children are a blessing. I know this because the Bible says they are. Psalm 127 says they are a gift, a reward, like arrows in the hand of a warrior, and the man who has a quiver full is blessed. I’ve heard a lot of funny things about that verse regarding the number of kids we’re supposed to have. That 5 arrows is a full quiver, so we should all have 5 children. Everyone who has seen The Lord of the Rings knows that Legolas had way more than 5 arrows. But he’s an elf and not the kind that sits on a shelf or eats syrup on spaghetti but apparently the kind that shoots arrows and can run really fast and is best friends with a dwarf, so perhaps his quiver is different. But he had way more arrows than we have children. And people still tell me that a quiver full is 5 arrows.
People are silly. Children are a blessing. Both are true. Often the Bible says things are true and we don’t argue with it because it so clearly lines up with what we see in normal life that it just makes sense. Anyone who holds a baby or hears a toddler laugh or sees a teenager figure out who they are knows that those humans are gifts. Children are also hard because they are people. And people, as we just established, are silly. We do things that don’t make sense. We do things that are not good. We are selfish. Sometimes we even do evil things. Children are heavenly blessings capable of evil deeds. This also makes sense because we both see it in real life and in our own hearts. We want life to be clean and neat and make sense and for all the books to fit on the shelf just right and all the forks to sit perfectly in the drawer but the reality we see right in front of us never quite matches up.
We have a Christmas tree that I bought the year after we moved to OKC from Guatemala. I bought it out of frustration because the tree we had brought with us in a 20-foot shipping container, the tree which had worked perfectly well for many years, decided to stop working the day we plugged it in to decorate for Christmas. So, I went to Target and bought a tree that cost way more than I thought was reasonable because that’s what people do when they are frustrated. At least that’s what I do. That unreasonable Christmas tree now has strands of lights that don’t work. They don’t work because not everything is clean and neat and perfect in life. For the past 2 years I have tried to replace the little lights that aren’t twinkling until I just put strands of lights that work on top of the strands of lights that don’t work because I don’t want to get frustrated and buy another tree at Target. Life isn’t clean and neat. It’s messy. And sometimes if both full of wonder and full of horror all at the same time.
Matthew 2 begins with this mysterious bunch of people called the Magi who came from the east by following a star. It’s wonderful, mysterious, and, etymologically, magical. We make a lot of things up about these guys. We say they were kings. We say there were three of them. We say they were wise and that they were men. Matthew just calls them Magi and that they spooked Herod. He also says that they followed a star from where most scholars think is Persia or Babylon because Daniel mentions them in Daniel 2:2. But they follow this star to Jerusalem where, after they talk to Herod, the star moves.
They were in Jerusalem, which was west of where they were. Then the star directs them to Bethlehem, which is just a few miles south of Jerusalem. And it makes sense for them to go to Jerusalem because that’s where the king should be. But the king isn’t in Jerusalem. At least not yet. So the star moves to show them where the King is and Matthew tells us that when they saw the star, “the rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.” They didn’t just rejoice. Or rejoice exceedingly. They rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. Like watching a kid load toppings on ice cream, they were excessive. Exceeding rejoicing. Great joy. They emptied the whipped cream and added seven kinds of sprinkles. And their obedient following of God’s clear direction leads them to worship and give these gifts to Jesus. It’s wonderful.
But then we get two dreams. One to the Magi, one to Joseph, warning them to flee from Herod because he is coming and he has murder in his heart. Verse 16 says that he became very enraged, but he didn’t go to Target to spend too much on a Christmas tree. He ordered people to go to Bethlehem and take all the baby boys two years and younger out of their parent’s quivers and slaughter them on the altar of his fear. The shift is shocking. Like it shouldn’t be in the Bible. But it is in the Bible. Because the Bible is the story of how things really are. And Herod really was evil. He killed a bunch of babies and toddlers. That defines evil in my book.
The Nativity isn’t in our Bibles because it makes us happy. It’s in our Bibles because humans are evil and we need a Savior like us who can pay for all the evil we have done so we can be freed from it. It is both exceeding joy and breathtaking sadness. It is mystery and wonder and hand-to-your-mouth horror. It is the story of a blessing, because children are a blessing, and this particular child was The Blessing who would take away the sin of the world.
So this Christmas, when the lights stop working and the cat breaks an ornament, and you burn the peppermint snickerdoodles and get frustrated and run to Target, remember that every broken moment shines like that star, pointing us to our need for Jesus. You can become afraid and lash out at the people in your world like Herod, or you can kneel like the Magi and choose to rejoice at the feet of your Redeemer. He came to our broken world, our world where things break and children die and sadness washes over us, and unspeakable things happen, so that we could have someone we can cry out to when all the broken things break us. When you feel overwhelmed, fall to the ground and worship Jesus, and let Him exchange your fear and exhaustion with great joy.
