Friday, September 4, 2026
After
they were gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying,
“Get up! Take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I
tell you. For Herod is about to search
for the child to kill him.” So he got up, took the child and
his mother during the night, and escaped to Egypt. He stayed
there until Herod’s death, so that what was spoken by the Lord through the
prophet might be fulfilled: Out of Egypt I called my Son. Matthew 2:13-15
Tradition has it that Jesus’ family spent a
decade in Egypt after they fled Herod’s massacre of the innocents. The king’s way of dealing with the prophecy
of a child king born in his territory was to kill all the male children under
two years of age. It’s interesting that
Joseph and Mary took baby Jesus to Egypt to escape Herod’s murderous plot. Egypt and Jewish people didn’t get along back
in Moses’ day, and that place became the safe haven for the carpenter’s family.
The journey from Bethlehem to Egypt (about
500 miles) is nearly the distance I’d travel in a day to go “back home” to
where I was born and raised. When you
leave your place of origin, you must realize there will be odd or new things
you’ll encounter… you’ll be in culture shock.
You can verify that with Abraham and Sarah who were migrants at retirement
age and became first time parents when Abe was about 100.
“Cathead biscuits” was a description I’d not heard,
and a shock to my mind in 1977. That was
the year we left New York for sunny Florida.
(Since then, we’ve been all over the map). The first time I heard of catheads was during
a men's breakfast held at First Baptist Church of Homosassa Springs, Florida.
When the cook mentioned he was serving some "cat heads" I
nearly lost my stomach contents! Pictures of roasted feline eyeballs will
do that!
I heard it often in New Orleans; the cook at
our church there was big-time fond of biscuits! He would serve all the
other men at the breakfast, then fry at least a half-dozen eggs for himself in
some floating concoction (which I later learned was bacon grease). When
he sat down with his plate, there were four catheads surrounding six fried eggs,
but you couldn’t tell there were eggs under all that pepper. A Cajun
culture shock, indeed!
The culture shock Jesus encountered when he
traveled from Heaven’s glory to Bethlehem’s manger was much greater than
discovering cathead biscuits or a king’s murderous anger; it was rejection by the
very people for which he was willing to die.
The true light that gives light to
everyone was coming into the world. He
was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world
did not recognize him. He came to his own, and his own
people did not receive him. John 1:9-11
Although there are pockets of revival always
going on somewhere on planet earth, the current day’s population is no
different than any other time in history…Jesus will be loved or hated; the one
thing he cannot be is ignored.
For You Today
There is enough “culture
shock” to go around, and I’m not referring to cathead biscuits. Hatred of one group for another, gender
confusion, murder, and the list goes on ad nauseum.
You
chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
[1] Title and Other Image by Gidon Pico from Pixabay
Unless noted, Scripture quotes The Christian Standard Bible©
No comments:
Post a Comment