\u201cTake the child and his mother and escape to Egypt . . . for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.\u201d
\n \u2014 Matthew 2:14<\/p>\n
Not everyone loves Christmas. Maybe you\u2019ve heard about Ebenezer Scrooge in the Charles Dickens novel A Christmas Carol, or about the Grinch in Dr. Seuss\u2019s story How the Grinch Stole Christmas! Both of these fictional characters eventually change and join in to celebrate Christmas\u2014but, tragically, the real-life King Herod in our Bible reading \u00a0for today did not. Herod\u2019s cruelty and suspicion led him to respond with murderous hatred when he heard about Jesus\u2019 being born as \u201cking of the Jews\u201d (Matthew 2:2-3).Herod\u2019s cruelty may make us shudder, but the human heart is naturally prone to fight against God\u2019s gift of his Son for our salvation. Christmas confronts us with our need for a new king, one who dethrones our priorities and requires us to make space for God\u2019s plan in our lives. Christmas can be attractive as long as our focus is on tinsel and nostalgia. But when the coming of Christ demands that we turn our desires and goals over to God in repentance, our natural impulse is to fight back.Our anger and hostility over God\u2019s gift of Jesus bring heartache and tears. But God has a way of protecting his witness to us. Jesus escaped Herod\u2019s murderous grasp. But in the process Herod drove the Son of God away and could not hear the good news. His actions are a warning to us when we are prone to like the idea of Christmas but to resist its truth.<\/p>\n
Holy God, soften our hearts so that we may receive your grace and goodness in Jesus. Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cTake the child and his mother and escape to Egypt . . . for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.\u201d \u2014 Matthew 2:14 Not everyone loves Christmas. Maybe you\u2019ve heard about Ebenezer Scrooge in the Charles Dickens novel A Christmas Carol, or about the Grinch in Dr. Seuss\u2019s story How<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[813,1137],"class_list":["post-14077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-devotionals","tag-christmas","tag-fighting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}