Focus
Pay attention to the tension in your body. Let go of it and any expectations to do anything other than God’s will today. Prepare yourself to hear God’s word.
Read
13 Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” 14 Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, 15 and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”
16 When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. 17 Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:
18 “A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”
Reflect
This text from Matthew 2, which is very traditional reading for after Christmas, has always bothered me. Can there be any way that Hosea and Jeremiah were thinking about Jesus and his flight to avoid Herod when they wrote these texts hundreds of years earlier? I guess that there are those who would say that the Holy Spirit was enlightening them more than they could have realized, and I would agree with that. Still, if the simplest interpretation of scripture is the best interpretation and it seems, in their Old Testament settings, that the reference is to the exodus and the caring away to Babylon, then why did Matthew cite them? Could it be that we are now to understand them in a whole new way?
In Isaiah 48:6The prophet says “From this time forward I make you hear new things, hidden things that you have not known.” and the risen Christ speaking from Revelation 21:5, “see I make all things new” Maybe this is Matthew’s way of telling us, in Jesus, all things, including our understanding, have changed.
Those of us who came to Christ a long time ago, we might have forgotten this. We are just busy living our “fuddy duddy” lives being our “fuddy duddy” selves, all immersed in our “fuddy duddyism”. Forgetting that, in Christ, all things, Literally ALL THINGS are new, fresh and ALIVE.
Pray
Father remind us of what it was like when we first trusted you and help us keep that newness in our lives
In Jesus name
Amen
Go with God!
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