Today we remember the Holy Innocents, those children whom
Herod had put to death in his fear of the king of the Jews rising up after the
visit of the Magi. We also should recall
those children whom Pharaoh put to death in Egypt when he feared that the Jews were
becoming too numerous.
Isaiah says that all the weeping over the children of your
bereavement will be swallowed up in victory.
The reversal of fortune will be glorious, Jerusalem will be the crowning
glory of the world. There will be no
room for all her inhabitants and the kings of the earth will be subservient to
the Jews, they will be foster parents and wet nurses to the children of
Israel. Isaiah’s vision says that they
will lick the dust from the feet of the Jews, certainly extraordinary
subservience. The vision is perhaps a
bit too literal in light of the work of Jesus and our understanding of divine
grace as the means of salvation, but understandable in light of the plight of
the Jews in the time of Isaiah to wish for such recompense for suffering.
When asked who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven
Jesus chose a child as the exemplar, one with the faith of a child. He wasn’t proclaiming a child to be innocent
under the law, certainly we were all born to sin but He did speak to the issue
of teaching a child to sin as a grievous thing.
While we are born in sin we must also at some level be tempted to sin and
therefore taught to sin. The serpent
tempted Eve who had the capacity for actual sin within her and we must be
careful with children to preserve their relative innocence by what we expose
them to in this life. It is a difficult
world to live in, filled with sin, and how we protect our children while
preparing them to live within this world is a difficult thing to answer. Their faith is complete and innocent in its
ultimate trust in the Word of God, not doubting or questioning, and it is the
world that leads them astray. The Good
News is that Jesus searches for the lost ones, praise the Lord!
No more let sins and
sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the
ground;
He comes to make His
blessings flow
Far as the curse is
found,
Far as the curse is
found,
Far as, far as, the
curse is found.
He rules the world
with truth and grace,
And makes the nations
prove
The glories of His
righteousness,
And wonders of His
love,
And wonders of His
love,
And wonders, wonders,
of His love.
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