Jesus, the toddler survivor

Christmas is different this year in America because of the children who will not be able to open their gifts.  Gifts are such fun to give and receive, but everything changes when a horrid tragedy like what happened in Connecticut happened.  One of the most horrible parts of this story is that this is not the first time something like this happened.  Many Christmases ago in Bethlehem a little boy received gifts that his whole family wondered at (Matthew 2:9-12) and those who gave the gifts were overjoyed.  And yet everything changed when an evil man named Herod was hunting the little boy to kill him (Matthew 2:13).  Jesus survived this hunt and fled to Egypt (Matthew 2:14-15), but there were many of his playmates and age mates who did not survive the evil man’s rage (Matthew 2:16-18).  Jesus grew up with the horrible start of surviving a man killing his friends when he was less than two years old.  He grew up in a similar way that the children who survived the shooting in Connecticut will.  Jesus was the toddler survivor.  Jesus started his life in the midst of grief, and he came to be known as the “man of sorrows” (Isaiah 53).  Both Jesus and the kids in Connecticut had and will have questions that few can answer:  “Why did this happen?”  “Where was God?”  “Why did God let this happen?” and many other such questions.   But God sent his son not only for more questions to be asked, but to provide an answer, and that answer was not an answer with words, but and answer with a person, the person of Jesus Christ, who was God and who was man, and who died and rose from the dead and so defeated death and offers an invitation to us.  He asks us not to bring our gifts only to his feet, as the wise men did, but also to bring our grief, our hatred, our death, because Jesus can take our grief and turn it into joy, and he can take our hatred and turn it into love, and he can take our death and turn it into life, because he himself is joy, and love, and life.  Jesus Christ invites us to himself.