Turn the Lights Off

Turn the Christmas lights off a for a few days. It's too sad. Christmas is wonderful -- but this year it's not so wonderful.

Turn the lights off for a few days.

The flags are at half-staff but that isn't enough. Half-staff is for military heroes and national leaders, but it doesn't serve at this time.

In America we fix problems. It's the nature of our culture. If there's a problem, then we can find a way to fix it. We are not like some other cultures that seem to accept fate. So we are going to fix this problem -- but not this week. No fixing. No solutions. Not this week.

Turn the lights off for a few days.

This part of the Christmas story is often overlooked, but we might read it this year. There's no historical evidence that it actually happened, but our knowledge of tyrants and human depravity says that it's true.

The Massacre of the Innocents is at Matthew 2:16–18

When [the Magi] had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Get up, he said, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."[5] When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.

After a few days, turn the Christmas lights on again. And tell a story about the sun and the moon. How the sun goes down every day and it becomes night, but we are not afraid, because the sun always comes back in the morning. And the moon goes to hide away every month, but it always comes back in a few days to brighten up the night.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours,

--

Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My blog is Fred Owens

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Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001