When You Have to Run

Picture it: your family gets woken up in the middle of the night and told you have to leave — right now — because someone powerful wants you dead. No goodbyes, no plan, just grab what you can and go. That’s not a movie plot. That’s the start of Jesus’ life on earth.

King Herod was terrified that this new “king” would replace him, so he decided to kill Him. An angel warned Joseph in a dream: take the child and His mother and escape to Egypt. And in the dark, that’s exactly what they did — a young family suddenly on the run.

Here’s something worth sitting with: Jesus was a refugee. The Son of God spent His earliest years as a displaced child in a foreign country, depending on a place that wasn’t home to keep Him alive. He knows what it feels like to flee danger you didn’t choose and didn’t cause.

And the place that took Him in was Egypt — in Africa. The continent of Africa sheltered the Savior of the world when His own homeland wasn’t safe. That’s not a small detail. When you read about Jesus’ safety, you’re reading about Africa being a refuge.

A lot of life feels like things happening to you that you never signed up for — a move, a divorce, a diagnosis, a family falling apart. You don’t get a vote, you just have to keep going. The flight to Egypt says God doesn’t abandon you in that chaos. He guided Joseph step by step, and the family was held the whole way through, all the way until it was finally safe to come home.

It also changes how you see the headlines. Every refugee and migrant on the news is someone in the exact situation Jesus was in. He wasn’t watching from a distance — He lived it. So when you choose empathy over judgment toward people who’ve had to run, you’re standing right next to Him.