The painting on the left was done by Francoise Joseph Navez in 1824 and depicts a scene from Herod’s massacre of the innocents (Matthew 2.16-18). Someone raised the question how would you proclaim the good news to the parents of those who lost children? How would you answer the question why did God save Jesus, but not my child? I don’t have an easy answer, I don’t really have a hard answer. I suppose if pressed, I would focus on the problem of evil, the consequence of free will, and the fact that God is with us in the mist of suffering, no matter how extreme. Perhaps, if bold, I might respond that Jesus escaped death under Herod, only to accept death under Pilate: a death that is bringing about a new heaven, a new earth, and a resurrection to life everlasting.
But the gospel of Matthew isn’t even interested in the question. I often wish the Bible was interested in my questions, but most of the time it isn’t. It tells us the story we need to know, not the story we want to know.