Artwork:
Massacre of the Innocents by Nicolas Poussin, (1625) is an oil on canvas painting. Housed at the Musée Condé in Chantilly, France, Poussin’s painting dramatically depicts from the Gospel of Matthew, King Herod’s mandate to have all boys in Bethlehem and surrounding vicinity aged two and under be put to death. Poussin used a primary palette which gives the work its dramatic strength.

Advent Devotional

Christmas has a dark side. It has to. The full brightness and splendor of all those angels’ choruses shine against a backdrop of the sinful world God came to save. Otherwise, the notion of a savior makes no sense.

At the moment of the greatest invasion of goodness this world had ever known, the badness of this world released a volcano of fury. Don’t let this often-suppressed detail of the Christmas story escape your notice—even if you do choose to omit it from your church’s children’s pageant. The human ruler of the land felt so demonically obsessed to find one specific baby who threatened him, he ordered the execution of every child two years old and younger. A little background check on Herod makes this lunacy believable, even if still horrific. He killed lots of people, including some close relatives, when he found them bothersome.

Every act of God’s salvation involves death. Think of the Egyptians in the Red Sea. That temporary salvation from earthly slavery foreshadowed the greatest, eternal, supernatural salvation purchased by the most innocent of substitutes—the One who joined the drama in a manger, amidst a culture filled with weeping and mourning. In an odd way, that moment’s tears looked forward to another day of grief—when that baby grew to be a man and die on a cross.

Most of our celebration—the vast majority of it—must be flooded with joy, songs of delight, decorations with bold colors and bright glitter, and the giving of gifts. This is right and good. But we must also allow for moments of reflection on the badness that needed expulsion, ugliness that needed cleansing, sin that needed atonement.

Prayer

Redeemer of the world,
show me the darkness
in my heart that needs
your light to shine on it.
Break my heart with the
things that break Your
heart. Help me hate sin so
as to love my
Savior all the more.