In one of my favourite novels, ?The Brothers Karamazov?, by Feodor Dostoyevsky, Ivan, who is an avowed agnostic, challenges his brother, a candidate for the priesthood, with a haunting question: ?But then, what about the children? How will we ever account for their sufferings??

I have to admit that while I have enjoyed the novel for many years, it is only this year that I?ve made the connection between Ivan?s question and the Christmas story, and I also have to admit that, though I have been a preacher for over 30 years, I have not preached many sermons on the suffering children of Christmas.

The children to which Ivan appeals, of course, are the children of Ramah who were put to death by King Herod in a frantic attempt to kill the Christ child who was prophesied to become the ?King of the Jews,? a position which meant a great deal to him and over which he was more than a little paranoid.

History records that he killed most of his family because he suspected that they wanted his job.

The plight of these children poses a tremendous barrier to faith for Ivan. He is not adverse to a form of justice where adults suffer the consequences of their choices or even an inherited disposition toward sin and rebellion. ?Adults,? he argues, ?have eaten from their apple of knowledge; they know about good and evil and are gods themselves. And they keep eating the apple.?

But he seems to have reached an impasse of faith as he mutters, ?little children haven?t eaten it.?

Ivan gives several dramatic and disturbing pictures of suffering, weeping children and then comments, ?those tears must be atoned for. How is it possible to atone for them? If the suffering of little children is needed to complete the sum total of suffering required to pay for the truth, I don?t want to know the truth, and I declare in advance that all the truth in the world is not worth the price.?

?We cannot afford to pay so much for a ticket,? Ivan says, ?And so I hasten to return the ticket I?ve been sent. It isn?t that I reject God; I am simply returning him most respectfully the ticket that would entitle me to a seat.?

I can empathise with Ivan in his spiritual quandary. For many years I visited children?s homes on Christmas morning.

I have seen little children, abandoned by their parents, their little bodies distorted by disease, no one to care for them but those who are paid to do so and very few who care whether they live or die. Suffering is never easy to observe but it becomes downright repulsive when an innocent child is its victim.

Suffering is not only no respecter of persons, it is no respecter of seasons either and there are many, even children, who will suffer greatly during this festive season. So how do we make sense of it? Can we make sense of it? Is there a solution for Ivan?s dilemma, ?but, what about the children??

He doesn?t really say it but Ivan wants to suggest that the Christmas story is unfair and that the birth of the Christ child who is to be the Saviour of the world cost Rachel and the other mothers of Ramah the death of their children.

He somehow sees God as the author of that tragedy and wants to suggest that it is unfair that one child, God?s child, got away because his parents were warned in a dream and their child was saved.

He argues that the death of these innocent children is too much of a price to pay for a ?ticket? to heaven. I wonder what would have been their reaction if the mothers of Ramah knew that the birth of the Saviour would cost them the lives of their children?

How would they have felt about the One who ?got away? because of the dream given to his parents?

There are no easy answers to Ivan?s question. There are no easy answers to the suffering of little children in our time either. Still, Matthew must have had his reasons for being obedient to the inspiration of the Spirit and leaving the account of the suffering children in his version of the Christmas story.

We can only speculate as to what was Matthew?s understanding of that awful night in and around Bethlehem. Was there perhaps in his heart a feeling that justice would have been more fully served if no boy child ?got away? that night?

Perhaps if Ivan, and you and I too, took time to more carefully read what Paul Harvey calls, ?the rest of the story? the answer just might be born within us.

The Apostle Paul argues the gospel is not logical to the world, ?a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.?

That pretty much covers all of us. It will still not be easy for us to get our minds around it but the reasoning of the gospel asserts that when God intervened to save the One who ?got away? he did in fact save all the children, not only those of Ramah, but all the children of the world, ?red, and yellow, black and white? for the One who got away made a way back to God for all of us.

Like so many of us, when suffering comes our way we can only find God as the one who takes the blame for our lot in life.

We fail to connect with the redemptive flow of his grace throughout our lives because of the pain we feel in the present. But God can be present as grace even in the midst of tragedy.

God did not will what happened in Ramah it was willed by a despotic, insecure king. The rest of the story reveals that God was present to bring new life and healing in spite of, rather than as the author of, such darkness. We may not readily discern God?s will and presence in every scene but if we take time to review the entire script of our lives we will rejoice in a God who is gloriously present to ensure that the central plot is never finally frustrated or abandoned.

What Ivan failed to understand is that the One who got away was in fact the ?ticket? that he could not bring himself to accept.

Ivan is not alone in that course. If its not the children of Ramah it?s some other incidence of violence or some obscure text in the Bible that distracts us from the central theme of the entire gospel story: the One had to ?get away? that day so that he could arrive at another bloody scene from which no dream could ever deliver him.

At Calvary the sound of the screaming mothers of Ramah are muffled by the passing years but Mary?s heart knows no such comfort. The One who ?got away? now suffers alone to atone for the sins of the world and to make right the wrong that caused the death of innocent children and the pain that pierced their mother?s heart.

I am grateful to Matthew for leaving that difficult scene in his account of the Christmas story. It illustrates for us that the Christ child was not born into the idyllic, peaceful world that some of our carols might suggest for the ?Silent Night? was soon shattered by the screams of children and mothers.

It?s all rather sombre if you stop reading there. The rest of the story allows your heart to embrace a truth that may forever elude your mind. The One that got away was delivered unto death that you and I might have life.