(reflections from Matthew chap. 2
...and my own experience)
Have you listened?
Have you heard?
It's the sound of weeping!
Can you hear the lament?
Rachel is crying out!
She refuses to be consoled.
Herod...dead babies...funerals...
Bethlehem wailing!
Those that seek power
or who strive to hold on to it,
will stop at nothing.
Deceiving, lying,
even outright murder
are simply necessary means
in their quest to satisfy
an insatiable hunger for...
P O W E R !
Even though
the day of despots
has mostly passed,
power-mongers
still shrewdly use
all the same evils,
creatively cloaked
in stealthful legal moves,
religiously pretentious justifications
or maybe just
a dog & pony show of distractions
to ruthlessly secure their positions.
The fortress of their strength
is shamelessly built with the rubble
from their destructive,
self promotion campaigns.
Ironically,
many who survive the plundering barbarism,
become loyal supporters.
Those too crushed
to be of any use
are left outside the citadel‘s wall of protection
to be trampled underfoot
by the rush of those fleeing
to this refuge
of strength and safety.
With the noise
of the frenzied mob of refugees
pushing into
the strongman's fortress,
who can hear the cries
of those wounded
and left for dead
by the one
to whom all others are running
for protection?
Have YOU heard?
...W E E P I N G ! ! !
...Rachel, still weeping!
Rachel's weeping,
memorialized in Holy Writ,
validates and affirms
the tears and lamentation
of all those, past and future,
who have been victimized
by those obsessed with power.
