The King Nobody Wanted

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Excerpt: ...One night King Herod gave a birthday party, and a pretty girl danced so well that the king offered to give her anything she asked. The girl went to her mother, to find out what she ought to say. Her mother hated John the Baptist because he had spoken the truth, and so she told her daughter: "Ask for the head of John the Baptist to be brought in here on a platter!" 103 The girl went to the king, and asked for John's head. The king was sorry then that he had made that promise, for he was half afraid of John. However, he had to keep his word. And so he sent servants to the prison, and they cut off the head of John the Baptist with a sword, and brought it back to the palace on a platter. When Jesus heard what had happened, he felt very sad. He said, "Let us go out to some quiet place, and rest awhile." 104 Things were not going very well. John the Baptist was dead, and Herod might be planning to kill Jesus next. Some men, in fact, came one day to warn him to get out of Herod's kingdom. "Go and tell that fox," he said, "that I am busy curing the sick and conquering evil, and neither Herod nor anybody else is going to stop me until I have finished my work!" But things were going badly, just the same. Jesus saw that there were not many of the people who understood his message or knew who he was. A few believed in him, but others soon lost interest in him, if they ever cared at all. Only once in a long while did he see any results from all his work. He explained this in one of his stories when he said: "A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he sowed, some of the seed fell in the pathway, and people walked on it, or the birds ate it up. Some fell on a rock, and this seed began to grow; but no sooner had it sprung up than it died, because it did not have deep roots. Some fell among thornbushes; and the thorns grew faster than the seed, and choked it. But some of the seed fell on good ground, and there it grew into a good harvest." When the disciples were...