it won't rhyme until the end

The Word for today:
Micah 7:7-20

mark this: Micah 5:2
But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
Though you are little among the thousands of Judah,
Yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel,
Whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting.

Sometimes, when the whole truth is too much for me to understand (let alone express) I open my Bible to the shiny parts.

When Jerusalem--a man-sized city where prophets go to die--is too big for me, I slip away to Bethlehem. Bethlehem is a boy-sized city, where the Savior went to be born. So when I'm feeling more like a child of God than a man of God, that's where I go.

Bethlehem isn't very far from Jerusalem, just a few miles. I've often wondered whether Jesus could see the stable in Bethlehem from his cross atop Golgotha.

I wouldn't be surprised if he could. It would be just like God to bring them together at the end; because, right from the start, the stable and the cross rhymed in God's mind. I mean, where else could the Lamb of God be born but in a stable amongst shepherds? Certainly not in an inn!

***

When I escape to Bethlehem, I always start back here in Micah, where the Savior's birth is foretold:

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,
Though you are little among the thousands of Judah,
Yet out of you shall come forth to Me the One to be Ruler in Israel,
Whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting. (Micah 5:2)

Then, in my imagination, I backtrack way over to "the east," to join the caravan of wise me. I want the whole shining experience! I gloat along the way, because I know what Micah said about Bethlehem, when all that the wise men knew, at first, was the prophecy of their countryman, Balaam:

I see him, but not now;
I behold him, but not near:
a star shall come out of Jacob,
and a scepter shall rise out of Israel. (Numbers 24:17)

So, I figure, the real wise man in this caravan is none other than me! Because the wise men follow the Balaam prophecy and the star all the way to Jerusalem, but then they have to stop and ask for further directions from there—which I (and Micah, of course) knew all along…

Jesus wasn't long in Bethlehem, maybe a year or two. Then an angel came and told Joseph that Herod would seek him out to destroy him.

That's when the Light left and the fears of all the years eclipsed Bethlehem's shining moment.
We know they were poor, because when Jesus was eight days old, they offered a few pigeons (1), which was what poor people brought to the Temple.

So we can assume that they had to sell the gold to pay for their escape to Egypt. That's a long, dark, and dangerous road, so they probably had to pay for protection, too. So there goes the frankincense, as well.

But remember when I said that God will rhyme -- every time-- the beginning with the end. Well, he does it again. Myrrh was a precious aromatic ointment, used as a perfume. Just a little dab would sweeten the situation.

But whenever a person died, all the myrrh that a household could muster was thickly applied to the body, to anoint it for burial.

The Bible doesn't really say so, but you just know that the poetic heart of God arranged it so that Mary never parted with the myrrh. She may as well have stored it in her heart, for all the good it would do anyone to try to steal it. It was the only baby "picture" she had left.

But when Joseph of Arimethea and Nicodemus took Jesus' body down from the cross, Mary knew what she had to do. The myrrh, after all those years, had found its purpose.

The sweetest rhyme in the whole story doesn’t come until the end.

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(1) Luke 2:24