I am home! I cannot express to you my thanks for praying for me (and us). There are a few thoughts I would like to share with you in the coming weeks. But this week I want to share with you a devotion given by Mr. Cu Dang. He is Vietnamese, and 75 years old. Mr. Dang was my roommate during this trip. I believe that I am the recipient of some rich spiritual blessings because of this man. After reading the devotion he shared with the group, I think you will agree.

Mary rejoicing. Rachel weeping. “My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior” (Luke 1:47). “A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping and great mourning” (Matthew 2:18). The disastrous event that took place in Bethlehem, where Herod ordered the slaughter of all the boys two years old and under, is part of the picture of Christmas, too. But we tend to allow sleigh bells, evergreens and shopping frenzies to push it out of view. Yet, it is, in fact, in all its brutality, what Christmas is about: the Savior’s “invasion” (to borrow from C.S. Lewis) and His confrontation with all the forces of evil. Compare Matthew 10:34: “I did not come to bring peace but a sword.”

Matthew’s narrative of Christ’s birth juxtaposes noble and wretched characters in stark contrast: stars and swords; majestic kingly visitations and twisted kingly agitation; Mary rejoicing and Rachel weeping; the children who die and the Child who gets away. How do we reconcile the glorious birth of our Savior with the bloody death of the boys of Bethlehem?

One Biblical historian suggests that the Magi were not kings and may not have been three, but were in any case, wise. Skilled astronomers and members of a priestly caste, they were industrious, courageous and truth-seeking pagans from present day Iran or thereabouts. They left Persia late in 3 B.C. after Jesus was born, arrived in late 2 B.C. when Jesus was a toddler. By the time they found the Child, His family was ensconced in a “house” (Matthew 2:10), and Herod calculated that the Child could not have been born more than 2 years earlier.

Herod in the meantime, suffered from “distemper” which the historian Flavius Josephus said “greatly increased upon him after a severe depression.” “His bowels were also ulcerated” and had “a difficulty of breathing, which was very loathsome, on account of the stench of his breath.” But it is not surprising that Josephus and other secular historians overlooked the death of a few Hebrew children in an insignificant village, for Herod’s infamous crimes were many. He put to death several of his own children and some of his wives whom he though were plotting against him. Emperor Augustus reportedly said it was better to be Herod’s sow than his son, for his sow had a better chance of surviving in a Jewish community. In the Greek language, as in English, there is only one letter difference between the words “sow” (Gk: huos) and “son” (Gk: huios).

A mother weeping for her lost children is as bad as it gets in this life. It is God’s chosen metaphor for the end of an anguish. Ramah was where the Jews gathered before they were carried to Babylon. Rachel, in the prophecy, represents the nation of Israel. The grief of the nation is attributed to Rachel, who was buried in Ramah (near Bethlehem, where the massacre took place). As the bereaved parents passed her tomb, she is pictured as weeping with them. In his effort to eliminate this infant Rival, Herod gained nothing but dishonorable mention in the annals of infamy.

But Rachel’s anguish serves also as a metaphor for mothers everywhere who face the tragic circumstances related to their children. My testimony. Forty years ago, after bringing up my first two daughters for seven years, on July 7, 1957, a national Vietnamese holiday, my wife gave birth to a male baby weighing almost 8 pounds. My wife was very happy because her dream came true. Unfortunately, the next morning she found that her baby suffered a crib death, because the doctor had loosely tied his umbilical cord; consequently his blood, as well as his life ebbed out. The doctor tried several ways to save the baby, but in vain, and he was no more—passed away.

The accepted title for this “Massacre of the Innocents” may be traced through Augustine to Cyprian. Irenaeus (who died in A.D. 202) called these children “martyrs,” and interpreted the tragedy as a gracious and tender “sending before” into His kingdom by the Lord Himself. Cyprian (who died in A.D. 258) said: “That it may be manifest that they who are slain for Christ’s sake are innocent, innocent infants were put to death for His name’s sake (Epistula 55.6). Augustine (A.D. 354) following Cyprian, speaks of the children, formally as the “Innocents” (commentary on Psalm 43:5) who were brought in God’s own time into His everlasting kingdom, in the Name of Him, even His own Son, Who in His nativity sanctified all childhood.

“O, God the Father, We your unworthy servants, acknowledge our transgressions, and we perceive the great wickedness of the world, whose evil is so deep to take the lives of those children. Help us to see how great is the evil of this world, and to seek after righteousness and all those things which pertain to our salvation. Then, Father of all mercy, grant strength and faith, wisdom and courage, grace and every blessing to those who are oppressed for Christ’s sake. Reveal unto them the deep things of the Spirit to support and sustain them. Give them a full measure of the fullness of Christ. Show them that the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men; and the weakness of God stronger than the strength of men. Give them the victory which overcomes the world, and the faith that transcends all adversity. Amen.”