GOP Gospel: The Flight Into Egypt

Day 8 of my Lent project. For background, please read this.

I've skipped the story of the Three Wise Men – if you want to know more about them, look under the second cut.

A reading from the Gospel according to the GOP:

Now after the Three Kings had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him, but fear not, for the grace of God is upon you and he will not permit his chosen to be endangered. Herod will rage but he shall not touch you; as God has said: 'A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you,' and 'Those who love me, I will deliver; I will protect those who know my name.'¹ So hold fast to your faith and remain in this land, whatever may befall around you, and do not flee to a land of unbelievers, for this is the land God has promised to his faithful and 'they shall never again be plucked up out of the land that I have given them'.²" So Joseph and the child and his mother remained in the city of David, their inheritance, and Herod in his jealousy slew all the infants in Bethlehem, but the Lord hid his blessed family from the eyes of Herod and they came to no harm.

¹Psalm 91:7 and 14. The Psalms were, according to tradition, written by King David. Some of them make a lot more sense if you read them as being written by a guerrilla warlord in a land torn apart by a war of succession, rather than nice poems God wrote about himself.
²Amos 9:15, written upon yet another instance of Israel being plucked up from their land and returned again. ( Republicans and the Covenant )

( Matthew 2:13-22 )