There does not seem to be a way to draw a portrait without shadows. Neither is a meaningful story one without dark places.
Herod is the bad guy at Christmas. When our church depicts the events around the birth of Jesus, he is included. Although the text says nothing about his
appearance, the men who take the part practice their scowls. They do not even pretend to worship the Infant King, the way the slimy monarch did.
But the maliciousness that creeps into my life leading up to Christmas is subtle. I deserve to be annoyed at the traffic, or the prices, or the late delivery. Because I am entitled to Get My Way. That is what kings do. They command, and others leap to appease them.
Knowing the name of the
character helps, when I am identifying those tendencies in myself. Seeing the distance between who I am and how I am feeling in this moment is how I choose a different way home.
"Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way." Matthew 2
"If we believed that--as is truly the case--everything good and true comes from the Lord and everything evil and false comes
from hell, then we would not claim the goodness as our own and make it self-serving or claim the evil as our own and make ourselves guilty of it." Divine Providence 320, Emanuel Swedenborg
