Although the Feast of the Innocents, the Christian Church's remembrance of the Roman king Herod's first century order to slaughter all the newborns in Bethlehem so as to eliminate the newly born Messiah, occurred last week, its modern day parallels are all too clear.

    

    If we substitute the name of Vladimir Putin for Herod, we see that then or now the motivation for killing innocents is the same:  a craven desire to hang on to one's power at all costs.    

    Not wishing to take any chances that Messiah would live to bring his message of salvation (meaning, literally, "rescue") to Israel, Herod decreed that all children in Bethlehem two years and under be killed.  It was a thoroughly brutal act, a despicable act of a tyrant so desperate to retain his throne that he was willing to eviscerate an entire generation of children.
    

    So it is in the mind of this modern day "king":  power is all.

    Pray for the children of Ukraine.

    Though it's often very difficult to reconcile the evil machinations of a human heart with the fact of a loving and omnipotent God, we must try.  Unless we do, we will continue to wrestle struggle with a dark, dark unknown:  a cold, cold world  without any point.

    God can be confounding, yes, but a pointless world is even more.